Modern Languages Inaugural lectures

‘Arriving before us’: seeing, ingenuity and imagination in Dante: Simon Gilson's Inaugural lecture

During his inaugural lecture, Professor Gilson will show how ideas about vision and cognate faculties such as the wits and the imagination are central to Dante’s masterpiece, the Commedia. Understanding these concerns helps us to appreciate not only how his narrative is structured and enlivened but also raises fundamental questions about the poem’s status, ultimate themes and messages. Simon Gilson Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Magdalen College. He works on Dante and Renaissance Italian literary, cultural and intellectual history. He has published widely on Dante, literary criticism in Renaissance Italy, and the relations between science, philosophy and literary culture in medieval and Renaissance Italy.

The Future of German Studies

Round Table on the occasion of the Inaugural Lecture of Henrike Lähnemann Discussion, held on Friday 22 January 2016 in the Taylor Institution. With contributions by Prof. Dr. Hans-Jochen Schiewer (University of Freiburg), Dr Wilhelm Krull (VolkswagenStiftung), Dr Dorothea Rüland (DAAD), Prof. Katrin Kohl (Oxford German Network), Dr Carsten Dose (FRIAS), Chair: Prof. Ritchie Robertson (Taylor Chair of German Studies). Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

The Materiality of Medieval Manuscripts

Henrike Lähnemann’s Inaugural Lecture for the Chair in German Medieval Literature and Linguistics. Lecture delivered on Thursday 21 January 2016 in the Taylorian Institute. The subject of the lecture is a new acquisition by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, a psalter written ca. 1500 by the nun Margaret Hopes in the Cistercian convent of Medingen near Lüneburg, MS. Don. e. 248. The hypothesis advanced is that the nuns use the materiality of their prayer-book as the embodiment of their devotion. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/