Description du projet
Les influences du commerce des manuscrits médiévaux
Le commerce des manuscrits médiévaux a connu un essor considérable durant la période 1900-1945. C’est également durant cette période que les États d’Europe et d’Amérique du Nord ont élaboré différentes idées sur leurs origines et leur culture, enracinées dans les concepts du Moyen Âge. Les récents progrès technologiques permettent de réaliser des analyses quantitatives des données sur la provenance de ces manuscrits et de mener des enquêtes approfondies sur leurs mouvements. Le projet CULTIVATE MSS, financé par l’UE, entreprendra une analyse qualitative des valeurs projetées sur les livres afin d’évaluer l’impact du commerce des manuscrits sur l’évolution des concepts explicatifs de la culture européenne. Il adoptera une méthode multidisciplinaire pour examiner le rôle des collectionneurs, des universitaires et des marchands dans la création de collections et pour comparer l’impact du commerce sur les études universitaires dans le monde anglophone, ainsi qu’en France et en Allemagne.
Objectif
CULTIVATE MSS aims to assess the significance of the trade in medieval manuscripts for the development of ideas about the nature and value of European culture in the early 20th century, a crucial period for the development of modern European nation states. Although recent technological developments have facilitated quantitative analyses of provenance data, charting in increasing detail the early-20th-century movement of manuscripts, including an exodus of works to America, qualitative analyses have failed to keep pace, leaving questions of how and why particular books were valued underexplored. The PI’s role in the development of the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts, which has begun to make available historic data about books, has revealed the need for a reassessment of the relationship between collecting and scholarship, and the potential for existing data about the manuscript trade to be used, with unpublished archival sources, to identify and compare the economic and philosophical values projected onto books. Thus the project uses the PI’s expertise to develop a multi-disciplinary approach to assess the roles of collectors, scholars and dealers in the formation of collections of medieval manuscripts, and the impact of this on scholarship, comparing the English-speaking world, France and Germany. It will analyse published and unpublished accounts of manuscripts, together with price data, to reconstruct values projected onto books. It will seek to contextualise these values within the history of the early 20th century, assessing the impact of two world wars and other political and economic shifts on the trade in books and attitudes to manuscripts as objects of national significance. The Middle Ages are often identified with the emergence of European cultural identities, thus a reappraisal of the historiography of the study of medieval manuscripts has the potential to impact research about attitudes to European culture and identity in a wide range of disciplines.
Champ scientifique
Not validated
Not validated
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdatabases
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistorymedieval history
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistorymodern history
- humanitieslanguages and literatureliterature studieshistory of literature
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementcommerce
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitution d’accueil
WC1E 7HU London
Royaume-Uni