Codex and Character: Byzantine Authors in/and their Books, Houghton-Medieval Studies Lecture in Early Book History, lecture by Niels Gaul (University of Edinburgh), Houghton Library, Harvard University, October 21, 2024, 5:30 pm

Houghton Library and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies present Niels Gaul on "Codex and Character: Byzantine Authors in/and their Books."

Many Byzantine literati commissioned carefully curated, authorized selections of their own writings. Some of the less affluent wrote them in their own hand. They all sought to leave an almost living testimony of their “character,” of their rhetoricized selves, to posterity. A survey of such codices—including draft versions, apographs, and fragments—allows to throw literary life and authorial manuscript production in the medieval megalopolis of Constantinople into sharper relief while at the same time revealing shared concerns of authorship across medieval cultures; in this respect, comparative glances at medieval Latin and middle-period Chinese book history seem particularly promising. 

Niels Gaul is the A. G. Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include the theatricized as well as manuscript performance of Byzantine literature and comparative approaches to the socio-historical contexts of classicizing learning.

Registration requested.