The John Coffin Memorial Lecture in Palaeography 2016

Daniel Wakelin (Jeremy Griffiths Professor of Medieval English Palaeography, University of Oxford)

‘Let me slip into something less comfortable’: Gothic Textualis by Accident and by Design

Date: 11/05/2016 – 17:30 – 19:00
Institute: Institute of English Studies
Venue: The Chancellor’s Hall, First Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Professor Wakelin is a leading expert in the palaeography and reading culture of the later Middle Ages. He is the author of numerous studies, among them Humanism, Reading and English Literature 1430-1530 (2007) and Scribal Correction and Literary Craft: English Manuscripts 1375-1510 (2014), which was joint winner of the DeLong Prize for book history in 2015. His John Coffin Memorial Lecture concerns the supposed ‘decadence’ of late gothic textualis, especially the more formal grades, whether it entailed effort or conscious design, and instances when individuals misunderstood it or slipped.

http://www.sas.ac.uk/support-research/public-events/2016/john-coffin-memorial-lecture-palaeography-2016

 

Lyell Lectures 2016

‘Public Reading and its Books: Monastic Ideals and Practice in England c. 1000-c. 1300’, to be given by Dr Teresa Webber (Trinity College, Cambridge), in the Weston Library Lecture Theatre (the former ‘New Bodlean’ Library), Broad Street, Oxford, on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5pm, from 3 May to 19 May, as follows:

3 May ‘Public Reading in Monastic Observance: the framework of norms

5 May ‘Reading the Gospel

10 May ‘Reading the Bible’

12 May ‘Celebrating the Saints’

17 May ‘Reading in Chapter’

19 May ‘Reading at Collation: Monastic Ideals and the Practice of Public Reading’

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whats-on/upcoming-events/2016/may/lyell-lectures-1

The Elision of Mark Pattison in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum holds both the original manuscript and first edition proofs for Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure (Object Numbers MS 1-1911 and PB 9-2008). The novel was published in 1895 and follows the tragic tale of Jude Fawley, whose impassioned ambition to become a scholar is repeatedly thwarted by a troublesome blend of social impediments and regrettable personal decision-making. The novel transpired to be Hardy’s swansong in literary fiction, and is an astonishingly rich vision of the troubled philosophical and political conditions in the fin de siècle.

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