Gathering at the Threshold:
A Celebratory Symposium

Since 2001, the Research Group has jointly sponsored scholarly meetings, co-organized by Mildred Budny and held at various centers.  These events constitute the New Series of Seminars, Workshops, Colloquia & Symposia.

The series began with

• ” ‘The Dating Service or the Dating Game?’
  Problems and Potential of Dating Materials from the Early Medieval Period”
  an Inaugural and Celebratory Workshop
  held at The College of New Jersey (November 2001)

• “Shaping Understanding:
  Form and Order in the Anglo-Saxon World, 400–1100”
  a Colloquium
  held at the British Museum (March 2002)

Then we focused on:

“Innovations for Editing Texts
from Antiquity to Enlightenment”
A Colloquium
(The Ohio State University, Columbus, 2003)

Co-organized by Mildred Budny and Frank T. Coulson

Co-sponsored by

• the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

• the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies in the Department of Greek and Latin of The Ohio State University

• the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at The Ohio State University, and

• the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University

The Colloquium (sometimes also called a Workshop) was held at the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies in October 2003.

This multidisciplinary meeting examined the merits of innovations, from the Classical period onward, for editing materials of many kinds, ranging from texts and glosses, through music, drama, and rituals, to inscriptions and illustrations.  The assembled experts explored problems, methods, and potential solutions for a variety of languages and types of texts, including literary as well as “unauthored” works, commentaries, and texts with single or multiple witnesses.  Among the areas of concern were the extent to which Classical techniques of editing are valid for forms of evidence from the medieval and later periods.

Speakers and Moderators

Introduction and Welcome

• Frank T. Coulson (Director of Palaeography, Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies)

• Mildred Budny (Director, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)

Session 1.  Historical Texts

Moderator:   Barbara A. Hanawalt (Department of History and Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
The Ohio State University)

• Michael Allen (Department of Classical Languages and Literature, University of Chicago)
  “Making Frechulf’s Histories“

• Paul Dutton (Department of History, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia)
  “Authorial Revisions, Fluid Texts, and Contamination:
  The Cases of Eriugena and William of Conches”

• Karl Morrison (Department of History, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey)
  ” ‘Man is an Animal; Man is Not an Animal’:
  How John Scottus Eriugena Edited out Art”

Session 2.  Computers, Digitization, and Editing

Moderator:  Robert Stevick (University of Washington, Seattle)

• Jesse Hurlbut (Department of French and Italian, Brigham Young University)
  “Sweeping the Cutting-Room Floor:
  Ordered Visualization of Editorial Scraps in the Electronic Edition”

• H. Lewis Ulman (Department of English, The Ohio State University)
  “Will the Real Edition Please Stand Out?
  Negotiating Multiple Textual Representations in Digital Editions”

• Raymond Cormier (Department of English, Philosophy, and Modern Languages,
  Longwood University, Farmville, Virginia)
  “Options for Future Access:
  Web Publishing and Digitizing Old French Texts”

Session 3.  Latin Texts

Moderator:  Ralph Hexter (Department of Classics, University of California at Berkeley)

• Carl Springer (College of the Arts and Sciences, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville)
  ” ‘Untrammeled Eclecticism’:  Towards a New Text of Sedulius”

• Virginia Brown (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto),
  “The Catalogus translationum et commentariorum and the Editing of Medieval and Renaissance Commentaries”

• Roger Reynolds (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto)
  “Problems and Challenges in the Editing of Medieval and Renaissance Commentaries”

• Francis Newton (Department of Classics, Duke University), and
  Gil Renberg (Department of Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University)
  “The Unique Text of the Passio S. Perpetuae in Monte Cassino 204 and the Group of Campanian Texts Descended from Late-Antique North African Exemplars”

Session 4.  Commentaries, Glossaries, and Glosses

Moderator:  Anna A. Grotans (Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University)

• Aaron J. Kleist (Department of English, Biola University, La Mirada, California)
  “Pieces on a Page:
  Historical Models and Contemporary Methods of Arranging Commentary and Text”

• Philip Rusche (Department of English, University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
  “Editing Unauthored and Scribal Texts:  Problems with Glossaries”

• Carin Ruff (Department of English, John Carroll University, University Heights, Ohio)
  “Issues in Editing Syntactical Glosses”

• Faith Wallis (Department of History, McGill University, Montréal)
  “Cloning or Transplantation?
  Options for Editing 12th-Century Commentaries on the Ars mediocinae (Articella)”

Session 5.  English Vernacular Texts

Moderator:  Christopher A. Jones (Department of English, The Ohio State University)

• George Keiser (Department of English, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas),
  “Innovative Scribes and Unstable Texts:  The Challenges of Editing Middle English Texts”

• Geoffrey R. Russom (Department of English, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island)
  “Metrical Emendation in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records”

• John Coldewey (Department of English, University of Washington, Seattle)
  “Drama Manuscripts as Self-Performing Artifacts”

Session 6.  Music, Liturgy, and the Visual Arts

Moderator: Carol Neuman de Vegvar (Department of Fine Arts, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio)

• Michel Huglo (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris)
  “The Edition of the Gregorian Gradual”

• Barbara Haggh (ARHU School of Music, University of Maryland, College Park)
  “Editor or Audience?  Problems with a Marian Officium“

• Asa Mittman (Department of Art History, Santa Clara University, Santa Cruz, California)
  “Medieval Scribal and Pictorial Editing in the Marvels of the East“

• Thomas H. Ohlgren (Department of English, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana) and
  Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, Princeton)
  “The Once and Future CORPUS Project”
  [Note:  Thomas H. Ohlgren was unable to attend, so Mildred Budny presented their joint paper.]

Session 7.  Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and Sources

Moderator:  Mildred Budny

• Carl Larrivee (Department of English, Wayne State University, Detroit)
  “Editing and Unediting the Exeter Book:  A Textual Analysis”

• Robert Stevick (Department of English, University of Washington, Seattle)
  “Spaced-out Beowulf and Aerated Alexander:  A Needlessly Occult Aspect of Editing”

• David Porter (Department of English, Southern University, Baton Rouge)
  “The Author, the Text, and the Compiler:  What’s an Editor to Do When New is Old?”

Concluding Remarks

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Photography by Raymond Cormier

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Laid out in Adobe Garamond™ by Leslie French, the Poster, Booking Form, and Program for the Colloquium are available here in pdf:

• 2003 Editing Colloquium Poster by the RGME

• 2003 Editing Colloquium Booking Form

• 2003 Editing Colloquium Program

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CORPUS ‘Project Abstract’ (2003), Page 1

Release 1.0 (1994)

The presentation at the Colloquium reporting the CORPUS of Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art represents part of the long-term commitment by the Research Group to this collaborative reference tool which catalogues, indexes, and illustrates the surviving manuscript art of the British Isles for the period 650–1100 CE.  In book form, it appeared as Insular and Anglo-Saxon Illuminated Manuscripts:  An Iconographic Catalogue, C. A.D. 625 to 1100, compiled and edited by Thomas H. Ohlgren (1986), with contributions by many scholars.  By the time of the Colloquium, the project — with Mildred Budny’s permission at Tom Ohlgren’s request — had by 1996 changed its name, inspired by the title of her then-still-forthcoming Illustrated Catalogue (1997). The CORPUS Project Abstract, prepared by Thomas Ohgren and Mildred Budny in late 2002, was circulated as a handout at the Colloqium, and now can be downloaded here.

Thomas Ohlgren’s ‘Iconographic Catalogue’ (1986)

Title Page (1986)

A Report of the “Contributions by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence” to the project in earlier years was presented by Mildred Budny at the 1993 Congress and published in the Old English Newsletter, Volume 23, Number 3 (1993), A-8 – A-23, now online. By the next year, the revised and expanded HyperText version (Release 1.0) of CORPUS had appeared (1994), followed by further updates behind the scenes over the succeeding years leading to the Project Abstract as presented at the Ohio State Colloquium.

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This Colloquium/Workshop expanded the subject of one of the Sessions sponsored by the Research Group at the 2003 Congress in May.

After this Colloquium, for the next few years, the Research Group concentrated on

• its Sessions at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies (2003–)

• the preparation of its Illustrated Bulletin, ShelfLife (with the first issue published in Winter 2006) and

• the design of its official Website in its first version: http://www.manuscriptevidence.org/data/ (launched in 2006).

The resumption of Symposia and similar Events began with

• the 2009 Anniversary Symposium on “Gathering at the Threshold” at Princeton University.

More of them followed in time. See the New Series.

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