Professor Nicholas Vincent, FBA, Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia will be giving a lecture on ‘Who wrote Magna Carta?’ for the University of London Annual Lecture in Palaeography to celebrates the 800^th anniversary of the granting of Magna Carta in 1215.

Professor Vincent is the Director of a one million pound project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This project brings together scholars at the University of East Anglia, King’s College London, the University of Oxford, Canterbury Christ Church University and the British Library and is designed to increase public understanding of the making and meaning of Magna Carta.

The lecture will be given in the Beveridge Hall (Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU) at 6pm on Wednesday 13 May. The invitations, although absolutely free, are by ticket. Tickets are available at http://tinyurl.com/nc5ach7.

The first Medieval Graduate Seminar of the Easter term will be held on 29^th April. Dr Tekla Bude will give a talk on ‘”Voiding awey the outward partes”: mathematical theology in late medieval England’.

All meetings will begin at 5.15pm in the English Faculty Board Room.

Holly James-Maddocks is currently resident in Cambridge as the Society for Renaissance Studies Postdoctoral Fellow.

Her project, ‘Medieval’ Illuminators in ‘Early Modern’ Books: A Survey of English Illumination in Incunables, 1455-1500, assesses the extent to which England’s illuminators saw the first printed books as an opportunity to diversify their trade. The aim is to situate each illuminated incunable within a group of manuscripts produced by the same border artist; in doing so, she hopes to determine whether the location, status, and manuscript work of these artists were relevant factors in their diversification at this critical and transitional stage in the history of the book.

Holly can also frequently be found in the Wren Library, Trinity College, cataloguing images in manuscripts for a fascicle in the Harvey Miller/Brepols series, An Index of Images in English Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VII c. 1380- c.1509 – a reference work listing representations of all types, from miniatures to catchwords.

Holly’s main research interest is in the 100+ illuminated manuscripts of poems by Chaucer, Lydgate, and Gower, particularly in using the border artist as a means of better understanding the relative position and status of books of Middle English literature within the rich variety of late medieval textual culture. By foregrounding the non-literary output of the same artists – from the liturgical to the legal, and in languages other than Middle English – she is finding that these wider activities prove a useful tool in demonstrating the specific circumstances surrounding the production of individual copies of works by Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate.

Holly will be in Cambridge until the summer and can be contacted on hnjm500[at]york.ac.uk.

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If you’re a visiting scholar or know of other visiting scholars please let us know. It would be great to foster more links between those visiting and other researchers in Cambridge.

On Friday 20th March 2015, Cambridge University Library will be holding a further masterclass as part of the Incunabula Project. The masterclass, entitled “Rubrication and fifteenth-century English printing” will be led by Satoko Tokunaga of Keio University & Takako Kato of De Montfort University. The seminar will be held in the Sir Geoffrey Keynes Room at the Library. It will start at 2.30pm and will last approximately 90 minutes, allowing time for questions and discussion. Attendance will be limited in order to allow all attendees a chance to see the books under discussion up close, and to participate in the discussion.

To book a place, please email <incunabula@lib.cam.ac.uk <mailto:incunabula@lib.cam.ac.uk>>.

This term’s final seminar will take place this Wednesday 11 March, at 5.15 in the English Faculty Board Room, when Professor A. C. Spearing will give a paper entitled ‘What is a Narrator?’.

Tony Spearing’s many critical books and essays have been immensely influential.  His /Medieval Dream-Poetry/ (1976) defined a field and still shapes it.   More recently, in his books /Textual Subjectivity/ (2005) and /Medieval Autographies/ (2012) he has become particularly
interested in narrative theory and the medieval ‘I’.

Our speaker will be arriving at about 5.00 if you would like to meet him beforehand (biscuits provided – please bring your own tea!), and there will be the usual opportunity afterwards to pursue conversations with the speaker over dinner.  Please come if you can.

Medieval Graduate Seminar (4 Mar)

On Wednesday 4th March, Daniel Wakelin (St Hilda’s College, Oxford) will speak on ‘Does the page matter?’

As always, we will be in the Board Room from about 4.45 p.m., please bring along a mug of tea, meet the speakers and catch up with fellow medievalists. The talk will start at 5.15, followed by drinks and questions.

After the paper you are very welcome to join the speaker for dinner in a nearby restaurant. For any enquiries beforehand, please contact the convenor, Orietta Da Rold (od245).

Medieval French Seminar (5 Mar)

The next Cambridge medieval French seminar will take place this Thursday, 5th March. Dr Lucas Wood, of Durham University, will be giving his paper entitled, ‘Genealogies of Redemption: La Queste del Saint Graal’. The seminar will start at 5pm (for 5.15), and this week will be in our original venue of the McGrath Centre, St Catharine’s.

CRASSH: Greek Dialects Round Table (5 Mar)

The Greek Dialects Round Table will take place on Thursday 5 March featuring Dr Stephen Colvin and our own Matthew Scarborough, chaired by Dr Rupert Thompson, taking place at 5.00pm in room SG2 of the Alison Richard Building (ground floor) (see here: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/25921) This is one of the Multilingualism and Exchange in the Ancient and Medieval World seminars, the last of this term.

On Monday 23rd February at 6.15pm, Dr Huw Grange (Cambridge) will speak at the UCL Interdisciplinary Medieval and Renaissance Seminar on ‘Mapping the Prose Tristan: A Cartographic Quest.’

On Tuesday, 24 February, Dr Gabriella Zuccolin (King’s College, Wellcome Trust Fellow, Cambridge) will give a talk as part of the CRASSH seminar series, ‘Multilingualism and Exchange in the Ancient and Medieval World’.

The seminar will be held in Room S3, 3rd Floor, Alison Richard Building at 5.00 – 7.00 PM. All are very welcome.