Panizzi Lecture – The Codex in the Classroom: Practical Dimensions of Medieval Diagrams
Channel: British Library
Date: 2022-12-06

This event took place on the 27 of October 2022. The information below is correct as of the publication date.

The second of the three lectures by Jeffrey F. Hamburger on diagrams in medieval art and thought.

Of all of the ideas and institutions the modern world has inherited from the Middle Ages, the university remains among the most durable. As demonstrated by a wide range of medieval schoolbooks, diagrams had a secure place throughout the curriculum, in which they served not simply as didactic aids but also a means of inculcating enduring patterns of thought.

Diagrams had a pragmatic as well as a Platonic aspect. The very appearance of diagrams – their elementary abstraction and etiolated forms – stamped them as exemplifications of thought that stood at the boundary between what is visible and what is not.

In the double character of the diagram – its liminal status at the boundary between the physical and the metaphysical, the rational and the irrational, the visible and the invisible – lay a large part of its appeal to medieval exegetes and artists.The Panizzi Lecture series 2022 is given by Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture, Harvard University.

Thanks to the kind support of Jonathan A. Hill booksellers we are now able offer an online stream of the Panizzi lectures for free.

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