Date/Time
Date(s) - 24 Oct 2012
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
Columbia University Faculty House, Room 2
Category(ies) No Categories
The second meeting of the University Seminar on Medieval Studies for the 2012-2013 academic year will take place on Wednesday, October 24, from 5:30-7:00pm in Room 2 of Faculty House (Columbia University). Joyce Coleman, of the University of Oklahoma, will speak on “Feeding the Ear with the Spices of Vision: Synesthesia and the Depiction of Medieval Reading.”
Summary: “Rude wordes and boystous,” says Thomas Usk—meaning thereby, simple and vivid language—“percen the herte of the herer to the innerest point, and planten there the sentence [meaning] of thinges.” This process Usk later calls “inseeing,” reprising the synesthetic imagery with which the hearing of books was persistently associated in the later Middle Ages. The popularity of public reading had less to do with illiteracy than with the rich sensory and social environment it created, as expressed by various rhetoricians and—as this paper will show—as reflected in illuminations that depict reading.
The talk will be followed by dinner at Faculty House at 7 pm. All those who wish to dine with the speaker after the talk must make reservations by contacting the rapporteur of the seminar, Jeffrey Wayno, either by phone or by email no later than one week before the talk. Phone: 607-342-5737; Email: [email protected]
Dinner is a fixed buffet menu, which costs $25 per person. Payment can be made to the rapporteur by cash or check, although checks are strongly preferred. Please make checks out to “Columbia University.”