Students
Trinity Elective: A World to Discover: Travel Memoirs and Memorabilia
A World to Discover: Travel Memoirs and Memorabilia is the Trinity Elective of the Manuscript, Book and Print Cultures Research Theme, which draws on memoirs and memorabilia of past travel experiences in the collections of Trinity College Library.
Other Undergraduate Modules
ENU44089 Distant Reading
ENU44089 is a third-year module in the School of English that introduces students schooled on slow, detailed, close reading of literature to the affordances of scale, exploring what kinds of literary scholarship are possible when we get our hands on datasets of eight million books and half a trillion words, see literary works primary as material or linguistic objects and open ourselves to quantitative as well as qualitative approaches to that data. The module draws inspiration from a number of directions, principally Franco Moretti’s Distant Reading and the linguistic subfield of Corpus Stylistics, but its basic goal is to illustrate the range of techniques that are available to bring an empirical backbone to literary history. If interested, please contact Mark Faulkner.
ENU34097 Medieval Manuscripts
ENU34097 is a fourth-year module in the School of English, taught partly in collaboration with the Library, which introduces the medieval book in all its variety. Each week’s seminar focusing on a single manuscript, probing its contents, construction, scribes and annotators for clues about its place in the literary culture of the time. Case studies include the Exeter Book, one of the four main manuscripts to contain Old English poetry, and the copy of Chaucer’s works made by his scribe, Adam, as well as several manuscripts from Trinity’s own holdings. Students receive basic training in skills like palaeography (reading medieval handwriting), codicology (describing the structure of manuscripts) and textual criticism (analysing a copy’s relationship to its authorial original) as part of the module and write an essay on a manuscript of their choice, often from Trinity’s collections, for the final assessment. If interested, please contact Mark Faulkner.
Postgraduate modules
HA7038 Arts of the Book
The Arts of the Book is a postgraduate module open to MPhil students in the History of Art and Architecture and Medieval Studies programmes. It introduces students to the art of books in the Islamic world, from calligraphy and early Qur’an manuscripts to secular book production in texts such as the medieval Persian Book of Kings or Shahnameh. We consider how texts work with images, through examining scientific illustrations of botanical and astronomical texts, such as the Dioscorides de Materia Medica, or the different conceptions of the world displayed in early maps and cartographic texts. We work closely with the renowned Islamic collection at the Chester Beatty in Dublin where students study manuscripts from the archives, exploring the world of bookmaking, calligraphy and manuscript production from the Islamic world at first hand. Seminars address issues including material practices, cultural identity, patronage, object biographies, image technologies and collecting histories. If interested please contact Anna McSweeney.
HA7039 The Artist and the Printed image: concepts, technologies, and dissemination from c.1900
The elective module from the M. Phil in History of Art may be taken as part of the structured PhD programme. It examines the practices and theories associated with the production, artistry, materiality, function, and dissemination of printed images designed / produced by modern and contemporary Irish artists. Developments in multiple image making technologies, from the wood cut to photography, from silkscreen to the digital, are explored. In addition to evaluating the print as art, other considerations include the contribution of the artist to local and international print and publishing history and culture, and their role within the commercial sector including advertising and graphic design. For more information, please contact Angela Griffith.
MVP12003 Introduction to Medieval Books and Documents
MVP12003 is a core module on the M. Phil in Medieval Studies but can also be taken by interested students as part of the structured PhD. It introduces students to medieval writing in its material form, making special use of Trinity’s world-class holdings of medieval books and documents, both in their surviving form and in electronic surrogate. Students learn how to describe, date and analyse the production, use and preservation of medieval texts. Students are also introduced to the processes by which texts are edited and the extent to which edited texts may be relied upon in various kinds of research. Assessment is an essay on a manuscript of the student’s choice, often from Trinity’s own collections. If interested, please contact Mark Faulkner.
MVP12004 Reading Medieval Books and Documents
MVP12004 is a core module on the M. Phil in Medieval Studies but can also be taken by interested students as part of the structured PhD. It introduces students to the range of scripts used to write medieval manuscripts. Like MVP12003: Introduction to Medieval Books and Documents, it makes special use of Trinity’s world-class holdings of medieval books and documents, both in their surviving form and in electronic surrogate. Students learn how to read the major scripts used during the medieval period and transcribe them according to appropriate conventions. They are also introduced to medieval practices of reading and writing and to the ways in which scribal hands may be dated. Finally, students will be introduced to the major scholarly debates in palaeography and learn to critically evaluate secondary literature in light of these debates. If interested, please contact Nicole Volmering.