Illuminating the Word in the Early Middle Ages

Lawrence Nees is Professor of Medieval Art and H. Fletcher Brown Chair of the Humanities at the University of Delaware. He is the author of The Gundohinus Gospels; From Justinian to Charlemagne: European Art A.D. 565–787; A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court; Early Medieval Art 300–1000; Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem, and edited Approaches to Early-Medieval Art. He is currently preparing two books: Illuminating the Word: On the beginnings of medieval book decoration, and Frankish Manuscripts 7th-10th Centuries. Professor Nees has received research fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center of Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (National Gallery of Art, Washington), the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, and the National Humanities Center.

1. The new medieval book and its heritage; 2. The St Petersburg Gregory Manuscript and its ornament; 3. Seeing and reading: the grammatical and rhetorical structure of text and image; 4. Decorated words in Late Antiquity: roots of illumination; 5. Illuminated manuscripts from Luxeuil and Bobbio; 6. Early insular manuscripts in relation to the beginnings of book illumination; 7. The beginnings of book illumination and the ethnic paradigm in modern historiography; 8. Conclusion: the transformation of the book.