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IMC 2012: Sessions

Session 227: Miscellanies, I: Selection and Diversity in Medieval Manuscripts

Monday 9 July 2012, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:HERA Project 'Cultural Memory & the Resources of the Past' (CMRP)
Organiser:Sven Meeder, Onderzoekinstituut voor Geschiedenis en Cultuur (OGC), Universiteit Utrecht
Moderator/Chair:Sven Meeder, Onderzoekinstituut voor Geschiedenis en Cultuur (OGC), Universiteit Utrecht
Paper 227-aA Flexible Unity: Ademar of Chabannes and the Production and Usage of MS Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Vossianus Latinus Octavo 15
(Language: English)
Ad van Els, Faculteit Geesteswetenschappen, Universiteit Utrecht
Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Teaching the Middle Ages
Paper 227-bA Natural Miscellany?: The Early Medieval Physiologus in its Manuscript Context
(Language: English)
Anna Dorofeeva, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 227-cThe History of the Trojan War in the Middle Ages: Manuscripts Containing Dares of Phrygia's De excidio Troiae historia
(Language: English)
N Yavuz, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Abstract

The majority of surviving medieval manuscripts preserve multiple texts, and many medieval texts constitute a combination of selected passages of older texts. These miscellanies aided medieval students in understanding the texts included and their relationships to other learning. Through selecting and combining medieval scholars determined a work's place within contemporary interests and preferences. Understanding the context of the scholars' choices and their consequences is therefore vital to the study of the medieval reception of texts from the past.

This session focusses on the medieval historian's method in approaching such miscellanies, both in the form of manuscripts and texts. How are we to interpret the selections made by medieval compilers, and how can we determine the context of the medieval scholars' choices? By bringing together papers covering the whole period from late Antiquity to the late Middle Ages, all textual genres, and across the medieval world, this session offers insight into the methods and modern tools employed by students of miscellanies and florilegia to interpret the choices of medieval scholars and scribes.