Reading (in) the Middle Ages II
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Stanford Univ.
Organizer Name
Rowan Dorin
Organizer Affiliation
Stanford Univ.
Presider Name
Mae Lyons-Penner
Presider Affiliation
Stanford Univ.
Paper Title 1
How to Read Exempla: Problems in Ontology and Method
Presenter 1 Name
Julie Orlemanski
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. of Chicago
Paper Title 2
Is a Machine Capable of Reading Medieval Manuscripts?
Presenter 2 Name
Sébastien Brisbois
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Univ. de Strasbourg
Paper Title 3
Problems and Perspectives of OCR Training for Middle English
Presenter 3 Name
Gianmarco E. Saretto
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Columbia Univ.
Paper Title 4
Annotating the Middle Ages
Presenter 4 Name
Andrew Prescott
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Univ. of Glasgow
Start Date
10-5-2019 3:30 PM
Session Location
Schneider 1280
Description
This panel is inspired by the tenth anniversary of Representations’ special issue, “The Way We Read Now”. It asks where we are ten years later, inviting scholars to reflect on their own modes of scholarly reading of medieval texts. In their 2009 introduction to “The Way We Read Now”, Sharon Marcus and Stephen Best noted a declining enthusiasm among scholars in “text-based disciplines” for reading texts symptomatically in order to expose their ideological priorities. Instead, they argued that literal readings should no longer be dismissed out of hand and called for renewed attention to the materiality of a text, the cognitive processes of reading, and the formal characteristics of a text. For medievalists, this paradox of dissimulation and display may be particularly acute, intensified by temporal, cultural and linguistic estrangement. In the last decade, surface reading, distant reading, new formalism, new sociology and other kinds of phenomenological engagement have been touted as new ways of attending to the particularities of literary objects. How has this step-back from ideological demystification affected the kinds of claims we make, and the research we pursue? How have new technologies changed the possibilities for reading medieval sources? How has the fusion of book history into literary criticism affected the status of both disciplines? ~Rowan Dorin & Mae Lyons-Penner
Reading (in) the Middle Ages II
Schneider 1280
This panel is inspired by the tenth anniversary of Representations’ special issue, “The Way We Read Now”. It asks where we are ten years later, inviting scholars to reflect on their own modes of scholarly reading of medieval texts. In their 2009 introduction to “The Way We Read Now”, Sharon Marcus and Stephen Best noted a declining enthusiasm among scholars in “text-based disciplines” for reading texts symptomatically in order to expose their ideological priorities. Instead, they argued that literal readings should no longer be dismissed out of hand and called for renewed attention to the materiality of a text, the cognitive processes of reading, and the formal characteristics of a text. For medievalists, this paradox of dissimulation and display may be particularly acute, intensified by temporal, cultural and linguistic estrangement. In the last decade, surface reading, distant reading, new formalism, new sociology and other kinds of phenomenological engagement have been touted as new ways of attending to the particularities of literary objects. How has this step-back from ideological demystification affected the kinds of claims we make, and the research we pursue? How have new technologies changed the possibilities for reading medieval sources? How has the fusion of book history into literary criticism affected the status of both disciplines? ~Rowan Dorin & Mae Lyons-Penner