Symposium 'Paratexts in Premodern Writing Cultures'

The study of paratexts has become increasingly crucial to the understanding of premodern book culture. Since its inception in 2010, the DBBE project has aimed to collect Byzantine book epigrams (or: metrical paratexts) in an open-access online database. Book epigrams are poems that provide us with more information about the books they are written in: scribes, patrons, and book owners reveal their presence and feelings.

With this conference we bring together scholars engaged in the exploration of premodern paratexts transmitted in a variety of languages (such as Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Coptic, Hebrew, Latin, Slavonic, Syriac). It is our aim to discuss the nature of paratextuality in medieval manuscripts, to reveal similarities and peculiarities of paratexts across language borders, and to understand the broader cultural and historical ramifications of paratexts. We are interested both in the textual evidence of medieval paratexts and in their material transmission.