IMC 2021: Sessions
Session 606: Anonymous Knowledge, II: Who Needs Authors Anyway? - Useful Anonymous Knowledge in Early Medieval Manuscripts
Tuesday 6 July 2021, 11.15-12.45
| Sponsor: | Anonymous Knowledge Network |
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| Organisers: | Irene van Renswoude, Huygens ING, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam / Faculteit Geesteswetenschappen, Universiteit Utrecht Carine van Rhijn, Departement Geschiedenis en Kunstgeschiedenis, Universiteit Utrecht |
| Moderator/Chair: | Irene van Renswoude, Huygens ING, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam / Faculteit Geesteswetenschappen, Universiteit Utrecht |
| Paper 606-a | Doctor Who?: Establishing Authority in Anonymous Collections of Early Medieval Medical Recipes (Language: English) Index terms: Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Manuscripts and Palaeography, Medicine |
| Paper 606-b | Trust the Thunder!: Assessing the Authority of Thunder Prognostication in Anonymous Early Medieval Brontologies (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Manuscripts and Palaeography |
| Paper 606-c | Anonymous Knowledge in Pastoral Manuscripts, or, One More Reason to Treat Haemorhoids with Black Pepper (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Medicine, Religious Life |
| Abstract | Early medieval manuscripts are full of texts that fail to mention an author: anonymous knowledge. Even though we may be able to attribute such texts anyway, the compilers and readers of these books seem not to have been all that interested in questions of authorship in these cases. How did this work? Was the Carolingian period as we understand it today perhaps less obsessed with biblical, patristic or scholarly authority than we think? Moreover, how did the credibility of anonymous knowledge function if its authority was not anchored in Big Names? In the second session, three papers investigate anonymous knowledge with practical purposes in daily life. |