Exploring the world of books at Oxford
Posts about ongoing research in book history at Oxford.
For Volume 6 of the series ‘Reformation Pamphlets’, a team of Germanists from Halle and Oxford have edited two short polemical texts from 1523 held in the Taylorian by Martin Luther, dealing with the question whether monks and nuns should leave their monastic houses: Deutung der greulichen Figur des Mönchkalbs (‘Interpretation of the Gruesome Figure …
The Week 7 seminar, in which books are stored, relics are lost, and stairs are climbed.
Rebecca Schleuss, MSt Modern Langauges This sunny afternoon the History of the Book seminar met in the Weston Library’s lecture theatre to explore another important aspect of medieval manuscripts: their materiality. When you mostly work with editions of texts, it is easy to detach them from their physical containers and forget about their materiality. Andrew …
A Presentation by Veronika Sladká One hundred years before Martin Luther’s arrival, the Reformation had already established itself in One hundred years before Martin Luther’s arrival, the Reformation had already established itself in Bohemia, resulting in a significant aversion towards sacred images. Nevertheless, bibliographical records suggest that around 6,000 printed images had been disseminated through …
by Imogen Lewis (MSt. Modern Languages) Palaeography. Now halfway through Michaelmas term, History of the Book students may just about be able to spell the term – but do we really know what it means? Having stroked many a book, discovered the secrets contained within their binding, and even learned to painstakingly typeset our own, …
The Presentation of Holy Texts Wilfried Kuugauraq Zibell, MSt. Yiddish Studies In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. – John 1:1 (KJV) The relationship between the written word and religion is, for the Abrahamic faiths and the regions where they have historically predominated, inextricable. The …
by Jed Surio (MSt in Modern Languages) Evanghélia Stead ‘Goethe’s Faust I outlined. Moritz Retzsch’s prints in circulation’ (open access available via Brill). The seminar consisted of two sessions with Evanghelia Stead: on 25 October 2023 a lecture followed by a show-and-tell session making use of the vast material on ‘Faust’ and ‘Werther’ brought together …
By Giovanna Truong (MSt Yiddish Studies) Oxford’s former Schola Musicae stands tucked in a corner of the Bodleian Old Library quadrangle. In modern times, neither harmonized voices nor metred strums resonate from behind that wooden door; rather, a different rhythm altogether emerges. The clack of type, the punch of the press, the busy murmurs of …
by Clara Busch (MSt. Modern Languages) Once more it is the first week of Michaelmas in Oxford and a new cohort of graduate students embark on their journey through the Modern Languages and, most importantly, the History of the Book(s). On this first Wednesday of term students, scholars, librarians, and fellow Bibliophiles gathered in the …
My internship at Oxford in Medieval German Studies by Anja Peters Travelling to Oxford to work as an intern with Professor Henrike Lähnemann for Trinity Term of 2023, I didn’t fully know what to expect. Of course I knew why I was going: To gain insights into the work and research at one of the …