Descrizione del progetto
Il commercio dei manoscritti medievali
Il commercio dei manoscritti medievali è esploso nel periodo compreso tra il 1900 e il 1945, che è anche l’epoca in cui gli stati europei e nordamericani formulavano idee circa le loro origini e cultura, radicate nei concetti del Medioevo. I recenti progressi tecnologici permettono di eseguire analisi quantitative sui dati relativi alla provenienza e uno studio dettagliato sugli spostamenti dei manoscritti. Il progetto CULTIVATE MSS, finanziato dall’UE, sta conducendo un’analisi qualitativa dei valori proiettati all’interno dei libri per valutare l’impatto del commercio di manoscritti sullo sviluppo delle idee relative alla cultura europea. Il progetto impiega un metodo multidisciplinare per esaminare il ruolo di collezionisti, studiosi e commercianti nella creazione di collezioni e paragona l’impatto del commercio sugli studi accademici nel mondo anglofono, in Francia e in Germania.
Obiettivo
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between collecting and scholarship, and the potential for existing data about the manuscript trade to be used, with unpublished archival sources, to identify and compare the economic and philosophical values projected onto books.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 It will analyse published and unpublished accounts of manuscripts, together with price data, to reconstruct values projected onto books.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.
Campo scientifico
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
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantIstituzione ospitante
WC1E 7HU London
Regno Unito