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Dear friends and colleagues,
A reminder that the next SIMS Online Lecture will take place this Friday, April 29. Registration is required for the zoom link. We look forward to seeing old and new friends there!
Friday, April 29, 2022, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EDT
Beyond the Page: Immaterial Texts in Late Medieval England
Daniel Wakelin, University of Oxford
From some curious habits by scribes of late Middle English manuscripts, I shall argue that scribes were sometimes not interested in, or were even vexed by, the material form of texts. I’ll focus on the scribes’ handling of page breaks.
While in some ways the division of the text into pages allowed scribes to show off their own craft process, when they decorated the division of the codex into pages, following conventions without textual function, in other ways the page breaks contributed
little to the text itself, and at times scribes used other methods to override the page breaks. From such examples, I shall argue that the scribes were more interested in the continuity of the text and of the reading process which continued beyond the literal
limits of the page. I’ll suggest that the scribes’ handling of page breaks adds to the story of material texts but also challenges the focus on materiality in the study of literature, suggesting other concerns that might be part of the history of reading.
For more information and to register for the Zoom link, go to
Beyond the Page: Immaterial Texts in Late Medieval England | Penn Libraries (upenn.edu)
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