(with apologies for cross-posting)

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Call for Papers: 'Manuscripts and Miscellaneity, c. 1450-1720'

University of Cambridge, UK, 3-4 July 2008

An international conference organized by Scriptorium: Medieval and Early 
Modern Manuscripts Online.

Speakers to include: Barbara Benedict, Julia Boffey, Victoria Burke, 
Margaret Connolly, Alexandra Gillespie, Earle Havens, Arthur Marotti, 
Steven May, Marcy North, Fred Schurink, John Thompson

Commonplace books, collections, miscellanies; collections of lyric verse, 
extracts from authors, sacred and profane, topographical, heraldic and 
legal information, estate and household accounts and recipes. How do we 
describe or classify manuscripts with such miscellaneous contents? What 
importance did such objects, frequently used for several different purposes 
over the course of their lives, have in the manuscript culture of the late 
medieval and early modern periods? And in what ways can recent critical 
interests in the material history of the book and of the history of reading 
practices help us to understand them?

In addressing these questions, this conference will bring together literary 
scholars and cultural historians, codicologists and historians of the book. 
It will foster discussion of manuscript miscellanies written or compiled 
between the mid-fifteenth and early-eighteenth centuries: their contents, 
their material forms, how they were written and read, the ways in which 
their contents were arranged and disposed (within single books or across 
sequences of books), who owned them and how they used them, and the places 
that they might have had in the schoolroom or university, home or library.

It will also question the very concept of miscellaneity, in relation to 
other kinds of compilation and collection, and to other methods of 
book-classification - is miscellaneity a helpful critical, methodological 
or bibliographical term? And how do we view the miscellany differently in 
this age of digital facsimiles and hypertext?

We have limited space for further papers at the conference, and would like 
to invite proposals in the following or related areas, though by no means 
restricted to them:

•Concepts of miscellaneity (as collection, variety, multiplicity)

•The categorizing / classification of miscellaneous manuscripts (within 
libraries or criticism)

•Manuscript and printed miscellanies and their relation

•Commonplace books

•Poetic miscellanies

•Household miscellanies (and the miscellany in the home)

•Religious miscellanies

•The ownership and circulation of miscellanies

•Female writers and miscellanies

•Education (miscellanies in the school, university, educational theory)

•The materiality of the miscellaneous manuscript (layout or arrangement of 
books, their material structures and construction)

•Contemporary editing or printing of miscellanies

•The manuscript miscellany in the digital age

Please send proposals, or enquiries, to Dr Christopher Burlinson, Faculty 
of English, University of Cambridge ([log in to unmask]) by 31 January 2008.

We hope to be able to arrange accommodation in Cambridge for our speakers 
and attendees, but cannot guarantee the availability of accommodation to 
those who register for the conference after 31 January 2008. In order to 
register for the conference, please contact Dr Christopher Burlinson 
([log in to unmask]) as soon as possible.


-- 
Dr Christopher Burlinson
Fellow and Director of Studies for Part II English
Emmanuel College
Cambridge

Senior Research Associate
Scriptorium: Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Online
Faculty of English
9 West Road
Cambridge

Tel.: 01223 331970 (college) / 767310 (faculty)
e-mail: [log in to unmask]