Marginalia and mortality in early modern Venice
| Dates: | 8 October 2015 |
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| Times: | 17:30 - 18:45 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | John Rylands Research Institute |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Adults, Current University students |
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| Speaker: | Dr Alex Bamji |
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This paper evaluates the significance of marginal images in Venice’s civic death registers. Throughout the early modern period, notaries drew attention to a small proportion of deaths in the city by supplementing the textual entry about the deceased individual with a drawing in the margin adjacent to the entry. The paper will assess the incidence, iconography and uniqueness of these images, and will compare them with visual marginalia in other early modern documents, both from Venice and beyond, to locate them within the broader context of manuscript culture. The surge of research into manuscript paratexts, marginalia and doodles by scholars of medieval Europe and early modern literary studies has been largely ignored by early modern historians, who often remain preoccupied with print culture. Scholarship on manuscript marginalia has focused on marginalia as evidence for reading practices, moreover. The inclusion of marginal images in Venice’s death registers was motivated by demographic, public health and governance considerations. Marginal images functioned as finding aids and tracking devices, and were utilised in these ways for a variety of purposes. Overall, the paper aims to highlight the importance of non-textual components of government documents, and to shed new light on early modern cultures of record-keeping
Speaker
Dr Alex Bamji
Role: Lecturer
Organisation: University of Leeds
Biography: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/profile/20041/260/alex__bamji
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
Christie Room
John Rylands Research Institute and Library
150 Deansgate
Manchester
Gtr Manchester
