Seminar: Making Poetry Collections by Hand and Creative Leisure

Join the Australian National University Centre for Early Modern Studies for a hybrid seminar with Professor Michelle O’Callaghan (University of Reading) on 3 September, 2024.

Making Poetry Collections by Hand and Creative Leisure

What can a focus on the work of the hand bring to the study of making poetry collections in early modern scribal cultures? Compiling poetry collections by hand depended on manual labour that required technical skills, was time-consuming, often intensive, and, in this sense, was work-like. In the case of those manuscripts compiled by the user, it was also work that was undertaken by choice, during leisure time, and, at some level, was satisfying. I am interested in how the category of productive leisure, which turns attention to the pleasurable work of the hand, can help to understand the kinds of making practised in scribal cultures in early modern England. The examples I will discuss were produced by scribes, working outside scriptoria and elite households, for whom penmanship was both work and recreation, and who make literary cultures beyond early modern London and the universities visible.

More details and bookings: https://events.humanitix.com/michelle-o-callaghan-making-poetry-collections-by-hand-and-productive-leisure