Session202
TitleAnonymous Knowledge, I: The Sliding Scale of Authorship
Date/TimeMonday 4 July 2022: 14.15-15.45
 
SponsorAnonymous Knowledge Project
 
OrganiserIrene van Renswoude, Boekwetenschap, Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen / Huygens Instituut, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Carine van Rhijn, Departement Geschiedenis en Kunstgeschiedenis, Universiteit Utrecht
 
Moderator/ChairBastiaan Waagmeester, Seminar für mittelalterliche Geschichte, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
 
Paper 202-a Circular Authority: Author Collectives, Patrons, and the Notion of Publication
(Language: English)
Irene van Renswoude, Boekwetenschap, Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen / Huygens Instituut, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Index Terms: Language and Literature - Latin; Learning (The Classical Inheritance); Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 202-b Anonymous Orthodoxy Added to Carolingian Psalters: The Case of the Te Deum
(Language: English)
Rosamond McKitterick, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Index Terms: Liturgy; Manuscripts and Palaeography; Music; Theology
Paper 202-c Changing Concepts of Authorship in 10th-Century Latin Europe: The Rebellious Rather of Verona
(Language: English)
Sigga Engsbro, Center for Skole og Læring, Professionshøjskolen Absalon
Index Terms: Language and Literature - Latin; Manuscripts and Palaeography
 
AbstractThe Anonymous Knowledge Project has organised two sessions that will engage with questions of authorship and authority of texts, starting from the manuscripts in which they survive. What ways of referring to authors and authority do we find in manuscripts with texts that do not carry the name of an author? What can we say about 'anonymity by degree', so the sliding scale between a text that is totally anonymous by any definition, and texts that show clever references to authors or other texts, while remaining, technically speaking, anonymous?

In this first session the papers address the field of tension between notions of authorship and the largely anonymous transmission of texts in early medieval manuscripts. Did this tension actually exist, or are we perhaps projecting modern views of (individual) authorship and (institutional) authority unto the manuscript culture of the early Middle Ages? The first and third paper look into notions of authorship, authority, and publication that were around at the time, while the second paper explores early medieval ideas of authorship rooted in the manuscript context, particularly textual compilation as a framework for social logic and cultural memory.