By Julia Olson
Assistant Editor
Just in time to gear up for Spooky Season, the Klau Library at HUC Cincinnati will be hosting a lecture on imaginary creatures in medieval and early modern books.
On September 19, from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m., the Klau Library on the HUC campus invites the community to a lecture on the forms and functions of fantastic beings depicted in literature.
The September 19 lecture was born out of a collaboration between the UC Classics library and the Klau. According to Abigail Bacon, Head of Public Services and Outreach at the Klau, the UC Classics library had approached her about doing a joint exhibition for the Rockdale bicentennial. The Klau Library already had a semester of exhibits planned out but was able to loan material from the special collection to UC for use in their exhibition. “We enjoyed collaborating on that together and talked about doing something more robust in the future,” Bacon added. In the spring, Rebecka Lindau, director of the UC Classics library, suggested the idea of an imaginary creatures exhibit. The Klau Library has an excellent and very accessible space for such an exhibit and will display the materials there.
Dr. Christoper Platts, Assistant Professor of Art History University Research Council Scholar at UC, will give a lecture on the 19th. The lecture, which will introduce the new exhibit, is titled “Tales of Imaginary Creatures in Medieval and Renaissance Rare Books and Manuscripts.” The discussion will explore the forms and functions of the fantastic beasts featured in manuscripts from the Medieval and Early Modern periods. They not only appear in the margins of these texts, but often as the focus of both religious and secular writings from those periods. Another theme that will be explored is the relationship (or lack thereof) between the images and the texts in which they appear.
Those interested in attending may find registration information on the Klau website.
