20th colloquium
of the Comité International de Paléographie Latine
Scribes and the Presentation of Texts (from Antiquity to c. 1550)
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 6-8 September 2017
The traditions and decisions of scribes in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance as to the best way of presenting different texts had a major influence on the development of books, documents, and inscriptions, as material, visual, intellectual, and social artifacts. Their work can be interpreted as a constant quest for the optimal balance between modes of production and use, in the choice and preparation of materials, layout and decoration, scripts and orthography.
The 20th international colloquium of the CIPL, hosted by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library with the support of the Institute of Sacred Music (both at Yale University, New Haven), will explore how generations of scribes adapted the forms of writing to new texts, new audiences and new functions, across centuries, geographical locations and social environments (monasteries and cathedrals, universities, courts, chanceries, etc.). We will look for submissions from faculty, scholars and graduate students.
The list of possible topics below is intended to elicit different approaches to the main theme of the meeting, taking into account not only single factors (scribes, texts or forms of writing) but especially the ways in which they interact.
1) Form and function
– Textual categories, materials, layout and scripts
– Textual structures and reader orientation: e.g. combinations of scripts, rubrics, running titles, book/chapter demarcations
– Decoration as a reading aid
– The visual/material forms of texts as manifestations of authority
– Original charters and other documents vs copies and cartularies
2) Decision-making and workflow
– The roles of authors, patrons and makers
– Constraint and freedom
– Interaction between makers (copyists, rubricators, artists, musical notators, et al.)
3) Tradition and innovation
– Major shifts in materials, techniques and forms of writing (from tablets to print)
– Consecutive settings of a text (or category of texts) over time
– Scribes and printers : from scripts to fonts
Special session 1: digital technologies for the study of manuscripts
– New technologies for scribe/script identification and layout analysis
– Digital texts and digital images of manuscripts : bridging the gap
– Manuscript content and IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework)
Special session 2: The Dura Europos papyri in the Beinecke collection