Constructing the Wycliffite Bible

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Lollard Society

Organizer Name

Michael Van Dussen

Organizer Affiliation

McGill Univ.

Presider Name

Kathleen Kennedy

Presider Affiliation

Pennsylvania State Univ.-Brandywine

Paper Title 1

Finding Aids and the Construction of Literacy in Wycliffite Biblical Manuscripts

Presenter 1 Name

David Lavinsky

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Yeshiva Univ.

Paper Title 2

Towards a New Edition of the Wycliffite Bible

Presenter 2 Name

Elizabeth Solopova

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Univ. of Oxford

Start Date

11-5-2017 1:30 PM

Session Location

Bernhard 210

Description

With the immanent publication of a critical edition of the Glossed Wycliffite Psalter, together with ongoing work on a new edition of the Wycliffite Bible at Oxford, we are in the midst of a new wave of textual-critical and other theoretical assessments of Wycliffite textual activity. This work will facilitate a more subtle analysis of the Wycliffite Bible in all its variants, and of how its intricate apparatus and companion texts were instrumental in its subsequent circulation. What’s especially topical about the Wycliffite Bible is how the medieval experience of its texts occurred within a wide variety of specific material circumstances even as a sense of scripture’s broader unity and coherence persisted. A “constructed” document is always both reducible and irreducible in this way; yet the scope and transmission of the Wycliffite Bible also vividly illustrates the significance of these alternatives. Panelists might consider the reducibility of the Wycliffite Bible in relation to approaches focused on specific books and manuscript traditions or on local patterns of production, use, and circulation. At the same time, its irreducibility as a “constructed” text—that is, its abstract expressive power, its surplus value as symbol or artifact—seems equally urgent, and might suggest that we take more theoretically oriented approaches to its materiality.

Michael Van Dussen

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May 11th, 1:30 PM

Constructing the Wycliffite Bible

Bernhard 210

With the immanent publication of a critical edition of the Glossed Wycliffite Psalter, together with ongoing work on a new edition of the Wycliffite Bible at Oxford, we are in the midst of a new wave of textual-critical and other theoretical assessments of Wycliffite textual activity. This work will facilitate a more subtle analysis of the Wycliffite Bible in all its variants, and of how its intricate apparatus and companion texts were instrumental in its subsequent circulation. What’s especially topical about the Wycliffite Bible is how the medieval experience of its texts occurred within a wide variety of specific material circumstances even as a sense of scripture’s broader unity and coherence persisted. A “constructed” document is always both reducible and irreducible in this way; yet the scope and transmission of the Wycliffite Bible also vividly illustrates the significance of these alternatives. Panelists might consider the reducibility of the Wycliffite Bible in relation to approaches focused on specific books and manuscript traditions or on local patterns of production, use, and circulation. At the same time, its irreducibility as a “constructed” text—that is, its abstract expressive power, its surplus value as symbol or artifact—seems equally urgent, and might suggest that we take more theoretically oriented approaches to its materiality.

Michael Van Dussen