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The Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprusinvites you to a hybrid public lecture (ZOOM & the ARU building)
on Monday, March 24th 2025, at 19:30 (EET)
by
Prof. Malcolm Walsby, Enssib, University of Lyon, France
titled:
The Archaeology of the Book: rethinking how we analyse books
For registration, please, click here:
https://ucy.zoom.us/meeting/register/YfJExH0qSRKm9_vCBEvBpw
Summary:
A book is much more than just the text it contains. It is first and foremost a physical object. To a certain extent, book historians and literary scholars have understood this. With what has been described as the material turn, more emphasis has been placed on the book as a commercial item as well as on ownership and reading. This emphasis on certain aspects of materiality has led to scholars in different countries to use the phrase ‘the archaeology of the book’... but, truth be told, the implications and possible ramifications of such an approach have been poorly understood. The idea of this lecture is to suggest how book history could benefit from a genuinely an archaeological approach. Drawing on a series of short case studies of fifteenth- to seventeenth-century volumes, it will outline how we can adapt archaeological analysis in order to understand books better. This can only be done by embracing an all-encompassing approach. All the different elements of materiality such as the paper, printing, binding, marks of use, appropriation, and preservation can be seen as clues that help determine the history of a volume. Through the interrelated analysis of the creation, use and conservation of the different materials, it will be possible to gain a contextualised understanding of texts and how they were considered at different moments of their existence. To achieve this, this lecture will show how book historians can adopt an archaeological approach that tries to define, qualify and link the various strata of evidence within each volume. It will demonstrate how the comprehensive analysis of a volume, the fruit of multiple interactions, by its creators, readers and owners, can renew our understanding of the impact of texts and their ideas over the centuries.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Gladstonos 12, 1095 Nicosia, Cyprus, Βιβλιοθήκη Ερευνητικής Μονάδας Αρχαιολογίας Πανεπιστημίου Κύπρου, Οδός Γλάδστωνος 12, 1095 Λευκωσία, Κύπρος,Nicosia, Cyprus
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