The Whole Page: Reintegrating Margins
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Amanda Gerber, Betsy L. Chunko
Organizer Affiliation
Eastern New Mexico Univ., Muhlenberg College
Presider Name
Betsy L. Chunko, Amanda Gerber
Paper Title 1
Cataloguing Medieval and Renaissance Glosses and Commentaries on Ovid: New Discoveries
Presenter 1 Name
Frank T. Coulson
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Ohio State Univ.
Paper Title 2
Scribes Entertaining Fictions: Marginalia in the Manuscripts of Piers Plowman
Presenter 2 Name
Alison Harper
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Univ. of Rochester
Paper Title 3
Rent and Rendered: Integrating Calligraphy and Ornament in the Book of Kells
Presenter 3 Name
Benjamin C. Tilghman
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Lawrence Univ.
Start Date
16-5-2015 10:00 AM
Session Location
Fetzer 1055
Description
Art and literary historians alike often interpret medieval images and works for their margins or their content, bifurcating the viewing/reading experience. However, following the recent work of scholars such as Paul Binski and Laura Kendrick, this panel invites papers that look beyond dualistic notions of centers versus margins to view “the whole page” as a continuum of constructed meaning. These papers will explore what arises in reader/viewer encounters in which the margin challenges the content it borders. The presenters will address the ways in which images--such as miniatures, historiated initials, and bas-de-page scenes--augment and even challenge the texts they accompany and are meant to illustrate. Likewise, these papers explore the relationship between written glosses, marginalia, macaronic insertions, or commentaries and the texts to which they relate. What do we gain by reading both text and margin as continuous elements of the same message/representation? How do these interrelated viewings/readings help to decipher puzzling materials? Overall, this panel generates a multidisciplinary and multifocal discussion that extends beyond traditional boundaries on pages and in fields, reunifying what has become disjointed only in modern medieval studies, not in medieval viewership/readership.
Amanda Gerber and Betsy L. Chunko
The Whole Page: Reintegrating Margins
Fetzer 1055
Art and literary historians alike often interpret medieval images and works for their margins or their content, bifurcating the viewing/reading experience. However, following the recent work of scholars such as Paul Binski and Laura Kendrick, this panel invites papers that look beyond dualistic notions of centers versus margins to view “the whole page” as a continuum of constructed meaning. These papers will explore what arises in reader/viewer encounters in which the margin challenges the content it borders. The presenters will address the ways in which images--such as miniatures, historiated initials, and bas-de-page scenes--augment and even challenge the texts they accompany and are meant to illustrate. Likewise, these papers explore the relationship between written glosses, marginalia, macaronic insertions, or commentaries and the texts to which they relate. What do we gain by reading both text and margin as continuous elements of the same message/representation? How do these interrelated viewings/readings help to decipher puzzling materials? Overall, this panel generates a multidisciplinary and multifocal discussion that extends beyond traditional boundaries on pages and in fields, reunifying what has become disjointed only in modern medieval studies, not in medieval viewership/readership.
Amanda Gerber and Betsy L. Chunko