The Bodleian Libraries (BODcasts)

Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019, gives the third lecture in the 2019 Lyell series. Part of the lecture series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy. The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.

Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019 gives the second lecture in the 2019 Lyell series. Part of the series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy. The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.

Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019, gives the first of the 2019 Lyell lecture series. Part of the lecture series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy. The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.

Learn about the conservation of unique Japanese items such as Naraehon, a Japanese genre of lavishly-illustrated literature from the fifteenth-eighteenth centuries.

Thinking 3D is an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of three-dimensionality and its impact on the arts and sciences, co-investigated by Dr Laura Moretti and Daryl Green. This talk presents an overview of the entire project, offering a comprehensive understanding of the development of communicating three-dimensional concepts via two-dimensional media. This Byrne-Bussey Marconi Lecture will tell the story of the inception of Thinking 3D via a number of landmark texts which are shaping the narrative and informing the curatorial work on the main exhibition.

A lecture for the Oxford Bibliographical Society and the Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book, by Bodleian Printer in Residence, 2018, Emily Martin. Emily describes her artists' books using movable devices, and demonstrating the way these add to the meaning of the text.

An examination of the notebooks in which Mary Shelley drafted Frankenstein. These two notebooks, one purchased probably in Geneva, the second in England, are now kept in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. With: Miranda Seymour, biographer of Mary Shelley, Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Librarian, Stephen Hebron, curator and author of Shelley's Ghost Recorded on Saturday, 24 March, 2018, for Frankenreads 2018

A celebration of Tolkien and his creations, with special guests Dame Marina Warner, Prof Verlyn Flieger and Dr Dimitra Fimi. The panel of guests will consider the origins and the uses of myth-making as a literary genre, the motivation which lay behind Tolkien's own myth creation, and the rise in fantasy literature during his lifetime.

Julia Mattison (RBC Foundation-Bodleian Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries until 19 December 2018) gives a lecture on reading french in 15th century english. Fifteenth-century English libraries and private collections have long been known to contain manuscripts in French. Studies of these French manuscripts have often emphasized contemporary acts of translation into English. Instead, this talk draws on manuscripts from the Bodleian’s collections, as well as medieval references to French books, in order to investigate how English readers and owners interacted with these objects. A close study of surviving French manuscripts reveals the reading habits of multilingual English readers and their understandings of the relationship between language and literature.

Dr Medha Saxena (Delhi, and Byrne Bussey Marconi Fellow), gives the 2018 annual Marconi lecture.

Eleanor Parker, Lecturer in Medieval English Literature, Brasenose College, Oxford, gives the fifth and final talk in the Tolkien: The Maker of Middle Earth lecture series. This lecture focuses on Tolkien and old norse. The language and literature of medieval Scandinavia and Iceland had a profound influence on Tolkien's imagination, and this talk will introduce the language through exploring some of the Old Norse sagas, poems and legends which particularly interested Tolkien in his scholarly and creative work. This series, convened by Dr Stuart Lee, presents five Oxford academics who examine the medieval languages that J.R.R. Tolkien studied and taught. Each lecture will present a short introduction to a language and its literature. The lectures will show how Tolkien's linguistic and philological scholarship inspired him to create names for characters and places in his literary works, and to invent the languages of Middle-earth.

Mark Atherton, Senior Lecturer in English, Regent's Park College, Oxford, gives the fourth talk in the Tolkien: The Maker of Middle Earth lecture series. This lecture focuses on Tolkien and old english. Old English (Anglo-Saxon) is the early form of English which King Alfred spoke and in which Beowulf is written: as Professor of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien taught this language, and as a writer he used its literature to inspire his fiction, but privately he saw himself as heir to the Old English of Mercia (the modern-day Midlands where he grew up), and he made this the language of the Riders of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings. This series, convened by Dr Stuart Lee, presents five Oxford academics who examine the medieval languages that J.R.R. Tolkien studied and taught. Each lecture will present a short introduction to a language and its literature. The lectures will show how Tolkien's linguistic and philological scholarship inspired him to create names for characters and places in his literary works, and to invent the languages of Middle-earth.

Elizabeth Solopova, Lecturer in English Literature, Christ Church, Oxford. Tolkien wrote that he was 'fascinated' with the 'beautiful' Gothic language that he started to study at school, and his literary works attest to this interest. The talk explores the influence of the history of the Goths and Gothic written tradition on Tolkien as a writer and scholar. This is the third talk in the Tolkien: The Maker of Middle Earth lecture series. This lecture focuses on Tolkien and gothic. This series, convened by Dr Stuart Lee, presents five Oxford academics who examine the medieval languages that J.R.R. Tolkien studied and taught. Each lecture will present a short introduction to a language and its literature. The lectures will show how Tolkien's linguistic and philological scholarship inspired him to create names for characters and places in his literary works, and to invent the languages of Middle-earth.

Tolkien once termed Welsh 'the elder language of the men of Britain'; this talk explores how the sounds and grammar of Welsh captured Tolkien's imagination and are reflected in Sindarin, one of the two major Elvish languages which he created. Mark Williams, Fitzjames Research Fellow in Old and Middle English, Merton College, Oxford gives the second talk in the Tolkien: The Maker of Middle Earth lecture series. This lecture focuses on Tolkien and medieval welsh. This series, convened by Dr Stuart Lee, presents five Oxford academics who examine the medieval languages that J.R.R. Tolkien studied and taught. Each lecture will present a short introduction to a language and its literature. The lectures will show how Tolkien's linguistic and philological scholarship inspired him to create names for characters and places in his literary works, and to invent the languages of Middle-earth.

This lecture is on Tolkien and middle english. Professor Carolyne Larrington, Tutorial Fellow in English Literature, St John's College, Oxford gives the first talk in the Tolkien: The Maker of Middle Earth lecture series. This lecture is on Tolkien and middle english. This series, convened by Dr Stuart Lee, presents five Oxford academics who examine the medieval languages that J.R.R. Tolkien studied and taught. Each lecture will present a short introduction to a language and its literature. The lectures will show how Tolkien's linguistic and philological scholarship inspired him to create names for characters and places in his literary works, and to invent the languages of Middle-earth.

Two hundred years after it was first published, Nick Groom explains the abiding appeal and extraordinary contemporary relevance of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. Far from being a supernatural Gothic fiction, he will show how deeply concerned the novel is with the most pressing scientific issues of its time, and how these continue to challenge us today in fields from artificial intelligence to medical ethics, challenging the very definition of what it is to be human.

Tom Shippey's lecture will move from the detail to the (eventual) design of Tolkien's languages, and even the philosophical issues embedded in Tolkien's fiction. Professionally speaking, Tolkien was a philologist, interested above all in the history and relationships of languages. Personally speaking, he was a self-declared 'niggler', who took immense pains over details. It was a vital moment when he solved a problem, which would have bothered few authors of fantasy, to do with the history and relationship of the languages of Middle-earth. It was this which opened up The Lord of the Rings to its full scale and sweep.

David Pearson, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2017-18 and Research Fellow, Institute of English Studies, University of London gives the fifth and final Lyell lecture on 8th May 2018.

David Pearson, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2017-18 and Research Fellow, Institute of English Studies, University of London gives the fourth Lyell lecture on 3rd May 2018.

David Pearson, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2017-18 and Research Fellow, Institute of English Studies, University of London gives the third Lyell lecture on 1st May 2018.

David Pearson, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2017-18 and Research Fellow, Institute of English Studies, University of London gives the second 2018 Lyell lecture on 26th April 2018.

David Pearson, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2017-18 and Research Fellow, Institute of English Studies, University of London, gives the first of the 2018 Lyell lectures on Tuesday 24 April 2018.

Jacob Ward, Bodleian Libraries Byrne-Bussey Marconi Fellow, Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL, gives the 2018 Marconi lecture. The term 'wireless' has very different meanings today to what it meant in the early twentieth century. Today, it connotes mobility, flexibility, instantaneity, whereas previously it has connoted fixity - 'the' wireless - and spirituality, with transmitting invisible signals through the ether. In this lecture, Jacob Ward explores what happened to 'wireless' in between these two meanings, from after World War II to the birth of the new wireless in the 1980s and 1990s, by exploring the imagination and imagery associated with wireless communications by its biggest proponents: the Marconi Companies.

This one-off print comprised text and drawing by artist and writer Tamarin Norwood, concluding her year-long residency at Spike Island Bristol, The Bodleian Libraries helped artist Tamarin Norwood to create an artwork 38 feet long, with text printed in a single continuous line using the replica 17th-century hand-press at the Weston Library for Special Collections.

Russell Maret talks about the development of the primary themes of his artist's books - alphabet design, colour printing, and geometric form, also the influences of history and technology on his methods and subject matter.

Visiting fellow, Dr Robin Eagles of the History of Parliament Trust discusses his research into Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford

Visiting researcher Dr Rachel Wamsley discusses the renowned Oppenheimer Collection, whose holdings shed light on the printing house as a site of cultural and literary encounter between Jews and Christians in early modern Europe. Close examination of early printed Yiddish books reveals how the same text could assume radically different material forms depending on whether it was marketed to a Jewish or non-Jewish audience. Setting two editions of an early Yiddish biblical epic side-by-side, Dr. Wamsley notes differences in typography and page-layout, editing and paratext, demonstrating how textual migration, from one cultural context to another, in turn engendered a transformation in the materiality of the book itself. At the same time, this very migration testifies to the surprising porosity of literary boundaries dividing Jewish and Christian communities in early modernity.

Dr Noah Arceneaux, Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Media Studies, San Diego State University, Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellow 2016-17, Bodleian Library, talks about the history of wireless broadcasting and the Bodleian Marconi Archive.

Dr Zahra Taheri, Bahari Visiting Fellow in the Persian Arts of the Book, speaks about Rumi's life, mystical teaching, doctrine, and poetry. With Music by Dr Peyman Heydarian. With a recitation of poetry by Rumi. Maulana Jalal Al-Din Muhammad, known as RUMI (1207-1273) is the most prominent mystic poet in Persian literature. When he was a child, his family fled Mongol invaders and settled in Konya. He left behind a vast body of lyric poetry, metaphysical writings, and mystical didactic teachings, which have influenced Persian, Urdu, and Turkish literature across the centuries. Rumi is one of the most widely read poets in translation today. His teachings are universal in nature, because he believes that religion is a personal experience which cannot be limited to logical arguments.

Giovanni Paoloni discusses the influence of the development of the shortwave beam technology on Marconi and the Marconi Company Marconi's wireless revolution, the Bodleian's Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellows, Giovanni Paoloni and Ines Queiroz, present findings from their research into Marconi and the early development of wireless technology. In the early development of wireless, short waves were considered of no technical and commercial consequence, and left behind as a research field. While working on the improvement of wireless for military communications, Marconi was once more first in understanding the existence of unexpected possibilities - starting a new 'wireless revolution'. Giovanni Paoloni discusses the influence of the development of the shortwave beam technology on Marconi and the Marconi Company.

Ines Queiroz explores how technical constraints have shaped strategies for wireless networks development Marconi's wireless revolution, the Bodleian's Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellows, Giovanni Paoloni and Ines Queiroz, present findings from their research into Marconi and the early development of wireless technology. Ines Queiroz explores how technical constraints have shaped strategies for wireless networks development. Focusing on a South Atlantic case study which brings new perspectives on geographical implications of wireless communications networks at an early stage of development.

Jonathan Lloyd and Tiffany Stern, discuss performing Shakespeare in the past and now Accompanied by actors to help illustrate their points, Jonathan Lloyd, Artistic Director of Pegasus Theatre, and Tiffany Stern, Professor of Early Modern Drama, discuss performing Shakespeare in the past and now.

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Professor of English Literature, Oxford, gives a talk for Shakespeare Oxford 2016 series. When the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth was celebrated in 1864, Robert Browning observed that he and his contemporaries had Shakespeare 'in our very bones and blood, our very selves'. In this talk, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explores some of the ways in which the Victorians tried to keep Shakespeare alive in the nineteenth century: through theatrical revivals and literary allusions; through paintings and photographs; and especially through their fascination with the idea that, as Tennyson put it in his poem Vastness, 'the dead are not dead but alive'.

A conversation with Dr Nasrin Askari, Bahari Visiting Fellow in the Persian Arts of the Book 2016 and Alasdair Watson, Bahari Curator of Persian Collections, Bodleian Library

Cristina Dondi and her colleagues launch the 15th Century Booktrade. Books printed between 1450 (the year of Gutenberg’s invention of modern printing) and 1500 (conventional cut-off date in scholarship) are known as incunabula. Some 30,000 editions are known today, in some 450,000 surviving copies, located in about 4,000 different public libraries, mostly in Europe and North America. Each surviving copy has a different history, which can be reconstructed with the help of physical evidence (ownership inscriptions, decoration, binding, coats of arms, manuscript annotations, stamps, prices, etc.) and bibliographical evidence (historic library catalogues, bookseller and auction catalogues, acquisition registers, etc.): all this is known as copy-specific information, or provenance, or material evidence, or post-production evidence. The idea that underpins the 15cBOOKTRADE Project is to use the material evidence from these thousands of surviving books, as well as unique documentary evidence -- the unpublished ledger of a Venetian bookseller in the 1480s which records the sale of 25,000 printed books with their prices -- to address five fundamental questions relating to the introduction of printing in the West which have so far eluded scholarship, partly because of lack of evidence, partly because of the lack of effective tools to deal with existing evidence.

Join the head gardeners of Stowe and Compton Verney to explore the challenges, changes and rewards of protecting and preserving Capability Brown's landscapes in his tercentenary year.

Lauren Kassell (Reader in the History of Science and Medicine, Cambridge) gives a talk for the Bodleian libraries. If the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet had lived in London, they might have consulted the astrologer-physician Simon Forman, whose casebook is shown in the exhibition Shakespeare's Dead. Lauren Kassell looks into the working life of a medical practitioner in Shakespeare's England.

Vernacular Translations of Plutarch and Political Argument in Renaissance France

Emma Smith (Professor of English Literature, Oxford), gives a talk on Shakespeare memorials. Ben Jonson wrote in 1623 that Shakespeare 'art a Moniment, without a tombe/ And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live'. Centuries later Jorge Luis Borges observed that 'when writers die, they become books', adding, 'which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation'. This lecture considers Shakespeare's First Folio as a literary memorial to Shakespeare, alongside other elegies, epitaphs and responses to the playwright's death.

Professor Katherine Duncan Jones, Senior Research Fellow, Somerville College, gives a talk on Shakespeare's poem, Venus and Adonis. In 1592-93, with London playhouses closed because of plague, Shakespeare wrote his most technically perfect work. Venus and Adonis (1593) is a highly original 'take' on the ancient Greek myth of the doomed Adonis - presented here as a pubertal boy incapable of responding to the goddess's amorous advances. It was a tearaway success with Elizabethan readers.

Peter McCullough, Professor of English, University of Oxford, gives a talk on John Donne. John Donne's sermon, Death's duell, was part of an early Stuart vogue for funeral sermons. Professor McCullough discusses Donne's contribution to this genre, and looks at how this tradition is connected to the poetic and dramatic representations of death on display in the exhibition, Shakespeare's Dead.

This podcast talks about accidental deaths and the hazards of everyday life in Shakespeare's day Coroners' inquest reports into accidental deaths tell us about the hazards of everyday life in Shakespeare's day. There were dangerous jobs, not just building, mining and farming, but also fetching water, and travel was perilous whether by cart, horse or boat. Even relaxation had its risks, from football and wrestling to maypole-dancing or a game of bowls on the frozen River Cherwell.

This lecture will celebrate Shakespeare's immortality on the exact 400th anniversary of his burial. It will begin from Theseus' famous speech in A Midsummer Night's Dream about the magical, transformative power of poetry. It will argue that Shakespeare inherited from antiquity a fascination with the intimate association between erotic love, magic and the creative imagination, and that this is one of the keys to the enduring power of his plays. Sir Jonathan Bate, Provost of Worcester College and Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, is one of the world's most renowned Shakespeare scholars, the author of, among many other works, Shakespeare and Ovid, The Genius of Shakespeare, Soul of the Age and (as co-editor) The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works. He co-curated Shakespeare Staging the World, the British Museum's exhibition for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, and he is the author of Being Shakespeare: A One-Man Play for Simon Callow, which has toured nationally and internationally and had three runs in the West End.

In this talk Andrew Dunning (Royal Bank of Canada Foundation Fellow) traces the development of the work of Alexander Neckam, one of the earliest known lecturers in Oxford, through manuscripts housed at the Bodleian. Leading up to the creation of the University, the priories of the Augustinian canons were among the most prominent intellectual foundations in twelfth-century Oxford. One of the earliest known lecturers in the town was Alexander Neckam, working at St Frideswide (now Christ Church) from around 1190, who practised a brand of education that promoted the development of individuals and the health of communities. Through manuscripts housed at the Bodleian, it is possible to trace the development of his work, and to uncover his peers at his later home in Cirencester. They emerge as precise scholars who produced books collaboratively, and later created a monument to his writings in an exchange with Malmesbury Abbey.

Abbess Baerbel Goercke, Mariensee, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.

Ulrike Hascher-Burger, Utrecht University, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.

Alan Coates, Rare Books Assistant Librarian, Bodleain, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.

Nigel F. Palmer, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.

Andrew Honey, Book Conservator (Research and Teaching), University of Oxford, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.

Introduction to the Masterclass by Professor Henrike Laehnemann, Chair of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics, University of Oxford. On the 22nd January 2016 the Bodleian hosted a masterclass from Professor Henrike Laehnemann, Chair of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics. The class examined manuscripts made in the Cistercian convent of Medingen during the late 15th century.