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
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