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IMC 2015: Sessions

Session 1532: Tradition and Renewal in Book Production and Text Transmission, I

Thursday 9 July 2015, 09.00-10.30

Moderator/Chair:Tjamke Snijders, Vakgroep Geschiedenis, Universiteit Gent
Paper 1532-aThe Material is Good and New: Continuity and Change in the Medieval Manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose
(Language: English)
Jennifer Elizabeth Lyle Owen, Department of History of Art, University of Edinburgh
Index terms: Art History - General, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 1532-bThe Middle English Versions of De remediis contra temptaciones: Audience, Transmission, Influence
(Language: English)
Jessica Lamothe, Department of English & Related Literature, University of York
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Lay Piety, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 1532-cThe Vernacular Lives of the Egyptian Hermit Onuphrius in Late Medieval Italy
(Language: English)
Manu Radhakrishnan, Department of History, Princeton University
Index terms: Hagiography, Lay Piety, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Monasticism
Abstract

Paper -a:
Medieval manuscript production and illumination by its very nature incorporated processes of continuity and change, as creators repeated and reformed the iconographies assigned to particular texts. The two hundred surviving illuminated copies of the Roman de la Rose offer a significant means of studying these processes, and the threads of stability and divergence in a manuscript tradition that lasted for three centuries. From one-off iconographic strategies to repeated models present in almost the entire corpus, these productions provide ample insight into the practice of vernacular manuscript making between the 13th and 15th centuries.

Paper -b:
William Flete's De remediis contra temptaciones is a treatise of spiritual guidance that circulated widely in 15th and early 16th-century England, in the original Latin and in several English translations. This paper will investigate the transmission of the Middle English versions based on my study of the manuscripts and early printed books in preparation for a new critical edition. I will survey the different translations and their religious and lay audience, and also discuss how the De remediis was adapted and reused within other vernacular religious texts of the period.

Paper -c:
The hermit Onuphrius was the last Egyptian desert father to be introduced to the Latin West. In 14th-century Italy, his cult spread widely owing to the combination of preaching and the related dissemination of vernacular translations aimed at a lay audience. This paper will examine the different vernacular translations and demonstrate that the most popular of these was an abbreviated version of the longer Latin text that was prepared specifically for a lay audience.