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Date/Time
Date(s) - 2 Apr 2012
5:15 PM - 7:15 PM

Location
University of Pennsylvania Van Pelt Library

Category(ies) No Categories


Workshop in the History of Material Texts presents Simran Thadani, Doctoral Candidate in the English Department at Penn, on “Distilled from the Limbeck of the Author’s Own Brain”: The Voice of the Writing Master within His Books.”

We will meet at 5:15 in the Martin and Margy Meyerson Conference Center, which is located on the second floor of Van Pelt Library, diagonally across from the elevator bank.

Thadani writes:
In this presentation, I contend that, in early modern England, printed penmanship manuals were powerful tools for the construction and display of their creators’ authorial personae. Examining a selection of these books, I suggest that pre-eminence in the crowded field of handwriting instruction was seen to depend not only on the quality of a scribe’s penmanship, and on the utility of his material, but also on the intensity of his showmanship and the robustness of his claims to expertise. Writing-masters therefore infused the parataxis, and sometimes even the calligraphic samples, of their ostensibly-pedagogical publications with rhetorical discourses, aggrandizing self-promotions, and polemical animosities, seeking to establish themselves as more than capable teachers and talented calligraphers: as knowledgeable authors, as distinguished authorities.
In theorizing the materiality and meaning of writing-masters’ words, I aim to highlight not only how they imagined and fashioned their authorial selves, but also how the print medium of their books facilitated the design and dissemination of their authorial messages. Studying human motivations through textual remains can be tricky, but through this project I hope to augment the tradition of individual-based biographical and bibliographical study by situating multiple men and manuals within social, commercial, and literary contexts and circuits.

Simran Thadani is a doctoral candidate in the English department at Penn, specializing in, well, the history of material texts. Her dissertation, entitled “The Pen’s Transcendencie,” examines the factors underlying the success of printed handwriting manuals in the London book market from 1570-1720. Her keen interest in rare books and special collections has inspired her to study and work at Rare Book School (UVa); complete internships/projects at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Morgan Library and Museum, and the Penn and Wellesley College rare book libraries; and curate public exhibitions on fine press printing and John Milton. She has been practicing calligraphy for over 15 years, and has recently started building a working collection of books about the theory and history of letterforms.