Greg Clark Lecture Introduction
Alright I think we're ready to go ahead and get started. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone to this inaugural event and what I hope will be a long-standing project on series of lectures, symposia; who knows? The Prehistory of the Book is a collaboration between the Center for the Pre-Modern World and Doheny Library Special Collections Department. I'm Jay Rubenstein, and as director of the Center for Premodern World, I would like to gratefully acknowledge the work of my colleagues Danielle Mihram and Melissa Miller, who have collaborated closely with me throughout this process. The goals of our project are twofold. First, we want to study the cultures of written communication that existed before the published book became both the norm and the highest expression of literate transmission. We do not ask where the book came from, or highlight the limitations of the written word in a pre-publication world. Rather, we wish to examine strategies, technologies, and products of written communication as practiced in the pre-modern world: the pre-modern world widely conceived and a topic as well, besides calligraphy, political broadside to incanabula, you name it, whatever you can imagine. The emergence of the publish-- of the publishing industry-- marks the chronological endpoint of our project, that its explanation is not our teleological aim.
The second goal of our work is to highlight the holdings of the collections here at USC. When I first considered applying to direct this newly founded Center, I was excited at the possibility of having access to the resources -- the manuscript resources at the Huntington and at the Getty. As a medieval historian, to my thinking, manuscripts are the lifeblood of my profession. What I was not expecting was the presence on campus here at USC of several medieval manuscripts which can serve as cultural, historical, and artistic resources for both research and teaching-- and indeed they already are. From the moment I arrived on the campus my friend and colleague Sabina Zonno as this year is a fellow at the Huntington Library has drawn my attention to these resources, particularly USC's two Books of Hours, which brings me to today's speaker.
Professor Gregory Clark from the University of the South (a renowned liberal arts college in my former home state of Tennessee and the site of one of the most rewarding and indeed legendary medieval studies conferences in the field), formerly assistant curator of the Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, one of the great treasures of medieval manuscript culture in America; indeed the world. Professor Clark is a renowned expert on the subject of illuminated manuscripts, in particular Books of Hours from Northern Europe. A precise description of the two manuscripts we have here at Doheny back there we'll be looking at later on today. His publications are numerous and include "Hours of Isabella la Catolica," "Made in Flanders: the Master of the Ghent Privileges," "The Spitz Master: A Parisian Book of Hours," and "Art in a Time of War: the Master of Morgan Manuscript Illumination in Paris during the Occupation." He has maintained this proteges scholarly output while carrying out wide-ranging teaching duties of swami, ancient medieval renaissance, and as I learned today, American animation. He is, finally, a native of Los Angeles. We are happy to welcome him for a visit home, and could not be more delighted to have him inaugurate our program in the prehistory of the book. Please welcome Professor Gregory Clark.
Transcribed by Micaela Rodgers for USC Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts, 2020.