Embodied Knowledge: Experiential Learning and Manuscript Studies

This workshop will allow participants to get up close to medieval manuscripts. The workshop will be arranged in two parts: 1) First, there will be an opportunity to view closely a selection of medieval manuscripts held at Edinburgh University Library’s CRC (predominantly French, Flemish and Scottish, 1400-1600). Participants will be encouraged to carefully examine these works and we will discuss several examples in detail; considering each as complex, collaborative objects, the result of multiple hands, skills and materials. 2) Second, will move to the teaching room and look closely at the materials themselves. We will examine and discuss those substances used in medieval manuscript production. We will try our hand at some penwork using quills and iron-gall ink, and some basic illuminated initials. We will consider materials, techniques and bodily constraints, using the experience to think about embodied knowledge and what can be learned by doing rather than just looking in the field of manuscript studies.

This workshop will be run by Dr Bryony Coombs, who is a Renaissance Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh lecturing on the art of the northern Renaissance. Dr Coombs' first monograph, Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c.1420-1550, was published in September 2024 with Edinburgh University Press. Her forthcoming second monograph, Scotland on Parchment: Illuminated Manuscripts in Late-Medieval Scotland, will likewise be published by Edinburgh University Press.

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