Naar aanleiding van de opening van het nieuwe academiejaar organiseert de VWM naar goede traditie de Pirennelezing. Dit jaar zal die gegeven worden door Emily Steiner (University of Pennsylvania). De lezing draagt de titel Medieval Encyclopedias and the making of Vernacular Literature, c.1240-1400 (abstract onderaan deze post). Professor Steiner is experte in Middelengelse literatuur en theater. Ze geniet internationale bekendheid als auteur van Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Reading ‘Piers Plowman’ (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
De Pirennelezing vindt plaats op maandag 3 december en gaat van start om 17.30 uur in de Jozef Plateauzaal (Jozef Plateaustraat 22, Gent). Achteraf wordt er een receptie aangeboden op dezelfde locatie. De lezing is gratis. Gelieve te registreren door via het onderstaande formulier uw gegevens in te vullen.
Abstract
The medieval encyclopedia is a significant if neglected chapter in our larger narrative about the transmission of knowledge from Latin to the vernaculars. The 1240s-1260s witnessed a surge in the production of Latin encyclopedias, which, over the course of the next two centuries, were translated into every European language and into verse as well as prose. That natural encyclopedias such as Thomas of Cantimpre’s De nature rerum (translated and versified by Jacob van Maerlant), Gautier de Metz’s L’Image du monde, Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (translated as Vanden proprieteyten der dinghen), and Le Livre de Sydrac (Het boek van Sidrac), were deemed suitable for high-end copying and illustration for the consumption of royal courts and wealthy laypeople, suggests further that the growth of vernacular literary culture was intertwined with the growth of vernacular information culture, and specifically of lay scientific discourse. The problem for modern literary scholars is that these texts sit awkwardly at the juncture between literature and information. However, medieval encyclopedias can tell us much about the formation of a body of general knowledge. Likewise, they reveal something about the early development of “popular science” or the bridge between scientific literature as a professional medium and the realms of political, cultural, and moral discourse. Finally, medieval encyclopedias invite us to set aside the distinctions we traditionally make between scientific and literary texts. By embracing the encyclopedia as both inventive literature and as nascent popular science, we will begin to see how it generated vernacular poetry and prose.
