Manuscripts and Performances in Religions, Arts, and Sciences.

• Superior document: Studies in Manuscript Cultures Series ; v.36
• Author: Brita, Antonella.
• TeilnehmendeR: Karolewski, Janina.; Husson, Matthieu.; Miolo, Laure.; Wimmer, Hanna.
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin/Boston : : Walter de Gruyter GmbH,, 2023.; ©2024.
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Manuscript Cultures Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (526 pages)

Throughout history, manuscripts have been made and used for religious, artistic, and scientific performances, and this practice continues in most cultures today. By focusing on the role manuscripts have in different kinds of performances, this volume contributes to the evolving field of investigating written artefacts and their functions.The collected essays regard manuscripts as points of intersection where textual, material, and performative aspects converge. The contributors analyse manuscripts in their forms and functions as well as their positioning in the performances for which they were made. These aspects unfold across the volume's three sections, examining how manuscripts are (1) used backstage, for preparing and giving instructions for performances; (2) taken onstage, contributing to the enactment of performances; and (3) performers in their own right, producing an effect on the audience.The diversified, interdisciplinary, and innovative methodologies of the included papers carry great potential to expand the traditional approaches of manuscript studies and find application outside the contributors' respective fields.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Manuscripts for Performances -- Making and Using Manuscripts in Theatre: The Material Dynamics of Two Nineteenth- Century Nathan der Weise Prompt Books -- Performative Aspects of Assyrian Celestial Divination and Babylonian Astronomical Diaries -- Pocket-Sized Liturgy: A Fifteenth-Century Breviary from the Abbey of San Zeno Maggiore -- Performing Multiplications Beyond the Text of Some Sanskrit Mathematical Commentaries -- A Bibliophile Performing Eclipse Computations: Lewis Caerleon and His Notebook -- Manuscripts in Performances -- Medieval Music Rolls, Scribes and Performance: The Extant Rolls of Thirteenth- Century English Polyphony -- Astronomical Computation as a Performance: Determining Planetary Positions with the Manuscript Erfurt, Angermuseum, 3134 -- The 'Orchestration' of Manuscripts: Ottonian Gospel Books from Bamberg Cathedral and Their Liturgical Use -- Reading the Psalms: The Relationship between Visual Organisation and Ritual in Medieval Latin Psalter Manuscripts -- The Use of Anisong Manuscripts at Funerals in Northern Thailand and Laos -- Manuscripts as Performers -- The Palace as 'Theatre of Knowledge': Performing with Manuscripts in the Alfonsine Court -- Performing (with) Multiple-Text Manuscripts in the Making of the Ethiopian Sainthood: Matter and Devotion in Ethiopia between the Fourteenth Century and the Present Time -- Performing Renga with Manuscripts -- Liturgical Practice in the Light of Medieval Liturgical Books -- Objects or Actors? Medieval Latin Manuscripts in Ritual Performances -- Contributors -- Index of Written Artefacts