Practices of Commentary

The comparative or connected study of localized intellectual traditions poses special challenges to the global turn in medieval studies. How can we enable conversations across language groups and intricate cultural formations, as well as disciplines? Practices of commentary offer a compelling opportunity: their visual layouts reveal assumptions about the relative status of text and gloss, while interpretive interlinear or marginal prompts capture the dynamic relationships among generations of teachers, students, and readers. The material traces of manuscript usage—from hastily scrawled marginal notes to vivid rubrication—illuminate the shared didactic and communicative practices developed within scholarly communities. By bringing together researchers working on specific cultures and discourses across Eurasia, this volume moves toward a global account of premodern commentary traditions.

Amanda Goodman is an assistant professor in the departments for the Study of Religion and East Asian Studies, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the transmission and spread of Buddhist tantra in the "borderland" regions between China and Tibet during the eighth to twelfth centuries.

Suzanne Conklin Akbari is Professor of Medieval Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Her research has traced the relationship between sight and knowledge in poetic texts, challenged the notion of medieval European literature’s insularity, and highlighted the influence of Arabic culture.

Carol Symes is the founding Executive Editor of The Medieval Globe. She is a University Scholar and Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, where she studies the production of knowledge in, and about, the medieval world.