Aura of the Word in the Early Age of Print (1450-1600)

The aim of this international and interdisciplinary conference is to
ascertain if, how and to what degree movable type influenced the early
modern significance of the aura and appearance of the word. This will
be done through a series of papers that reflect on how texts could
gain or bestow meaning through their relationship to their material
support and physical contexts or in the process of the act of writing
itself. What was the significance of the unique existence of writing
at the place where it happened to be? And what about the moment when,
the way in which and the person by whom it was created? Did writing
lose its aura when mechanically reproduced, as Walter Benjamin
believed to have been the case for images? Was it altered, or, as the
German art historian Horst Bredekamp has argued for devotional images,
unaffected by it? Keynote lectures by Adrian Armstrong (Queen Mary,
University of London) and Christopher Wood (Yale University).

For more information, visit the conference website:
http://www.auraoftheword.ugent.be

THURSDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2012
13:00 Registration and coffee

13:30 Welcome by Youri DESPLENTER (Ghent University - Group for Early
Modern Studies)

13:40 Jessica BUSKIRK (Technical University Dresden) & Samuel MAREEL
(Ghent University) – Introduction

14:00 Session One – Material Words (chair: Youri DESPLENTER - Ghent
University)
Johan OOSTERMAN (Radboud University Nijmegen) – A brief message on
salvation. Minor textual amulets: form, use, transmission
Kathryn M. RUDY (University of St Andrews) - Printed, Baked, and
Swallowed: the Aura of the IHS-Monogram
Martin PRZYBILSKI (University of Trier) - Jewish Concepts of the
Holiness of Script in the Age of Printing: The Case of the Genizah

16:00 Coffee Break

16:20 Session Two - The Word and the Image (chair: Samuel MAREEL -
Ghent University)
Joost KEIZER (Yale University) - Referentiality of the Image ca. 1500
Stijn BUSSELS (University of Groningen) - The Diptych of the Lentulus
Letter: Building Textual and Visual Evidence for Christ’s Appearance

18:00 Keynote Lecture
Adrian ARMSTRONG (Queen Mary, University of London) - Literary
Countermonuments of the Late Middle Ages

FRIDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2012

9:30 Session Three – Traveling Words (chair: Jessica BUSKIRK
(Technical University Dresden)
Tom DENEIRE (Huygens Institute, The Hague) - Sermo inter absentes.
The Auratic Word in Justus Lipsius’s Neo-Latin Correspondence
Christopher P. HEUER (Princeton University) - Speech as Object in the
North
Arjan VAN DIXHOORN (Ghent University) - Tactility, Intermediality and
Fictions of Orality in a Scribal Letter from Delft (1574)

11:30 Visit to the print room of the Royal Library of Belgium with
lecture by Joris VAN GRIEKEN (Royal Library of Belgium) - What's in a
Name? On Verses, Addresses and Signatures. The Appearance of Text on
Printed Images in Antwerp 1530 - 1560

12:30 Lunch (at the Royal Library)

14:00 Session Four – The Word in Three Dimensions (chair: Jan VAN DER
STOCK - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Maarten DELBEKE (Ghent University / Leiden University) - The Building
as Book. The case of Notre-Dame-des-Marais in Ferté-Bernard
Sara RYU (Yale University) - Inscription and Embodiment: The Place of
Text in Early Modern Sculpture
Jeroen VANDOMMELE (University of Groningen/Ghent University) -
Writing with Images. The Use of the Rebus as a Visible Riddle in
Sixteenth-Century Antwerp

16:00 Coffee Break

16:30 Keynote Lecture
Christopher WOOD (Yale University) - How to Recognize a Prophecy

SATURDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2012

9:30 Session Five – The Word of the Book (chair: Frederik BUYLAERT -
Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Nelleke MOSER (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) - Capitalizing Cornelis
Crul. Aura, Ornaments, and Order in BL Sloane Ms 1174
Rebecca DIXON (University of Leeds) - Reading Defacement:
Illustration and Labels in the Roman de Buscalus (BnF, ms fr.
9343-9344)

10:50 Coffee Break

11:10 Session Six – The Word in Manuscript and Print
Anne-Laure VAN BRUAENE (Ghent University) - The Adieu and Willecomme
for Jan van Hembyze or the Battle between Manuscript and Print in
Calvinist Ghent
Arnoud VISSER (Utrecht University) - Customizing the Classics:
Manuscript Marginalia and the Authority of the Reader

12:30 Closing remarks by Sabrina CORBELLINI (University of Groningen)

13:00 Lunch