Gordon Duff Prize
Your chance to write an essay and win £500!
The Gordon Duff Prize is awarded annually for an essay on a subject relating to the science or arts of books and manuscripts. It is open to all University of Cambridge members, students, staff and alumni. There is an award of £500 for the winner(s) of the competition: the prize can be shared for a co-written work or attributed to two separate entries.
The Prize arose out of the bequest of Edward Gordon Duff, read more about the history of the prize here.
How to enter
Who may compete?
The Gordon Duff Prize is an annual competition and is open to all University of Cambridge members, students, staff and alumni.
On what subject?
Any one of the following subjects: bibliography, palaeography, typography, book-binding, book-illustration, or the science of books and manuscripts and the arts relating thereto.
Proposal of subjects:
Please send a title and brief abstract of proposed subjects to the Cambridge University Library Research Institute, Cambridge, CB3 9DR (researchdevelopment@lib.cam.ac.uk) so as to reach them not later than the last day of Michaelmas Term, 19 December (email preferred). Please note the deadline for the 2024 prize has now passed.
Candidates will be informed whether their proposed subjects are approved by the Library Syndicate after its meeting in February.
If you have any enquiries related to the prize, please contact William Hale, Rare Books Specialist, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, CB3 9DR (wah26@cam.ac.uk).
Submission of essays:
If the proposed subject is approved, essays, which must not exceed 10,000 words in length, must be sent in hard-copy and electronic form to the Cambridge University Library Research Institute, Cambridge, CB3 9DR (researchdevelopment@lib.cam.ac.uk) by the last day of Lent Term, 24 March (or 25 March in a leap year).
Award:
The Prize shall be awarded in the Easter Term. If essays of sufficient merit are submitted, it shall be open to the Adjudicators to award an additional Prize.
Please note Adjudicators are not obliged to provide feedback to submitted essays.
A copy of the winning essay will be deposited in the Manuscript Department of the University Library.
Winners of the 2024 Prize
Cecilia Y. Zhou
Signs of the Time: The Dial of Ahaz figurae in Nicholas of Lyra’s Postilla litteralis
Abstract: The Postilla litteralis super totam Bibliam (Literal Commentary on the Entire Bible, 1322–1331) by the Franciscan exegete Nicholas of Lyra (1270–1349) became during its author’s lifetime one of the most important and widely read biblical commentaries of the Middle Ages. Nicholas’s approach was innovative for making extensive use of images, which he termed figurae, to render visually accessible the objects, edifices, and sites of the Bible; however, Nicholas’s figurae of the dial of Ahaz miracle—an astronomical-temporal miracle recounted in 2 Kings 20:8–11 and Isaiah 38:7–8—stand out for their inscrutability and unclear referent. Perhaps for this reason, they remain entirely unacknowledged in the scholarly literature.
Focusing primarily on the manuscript history of the Postilla litteralis, this paper seeks to explicate Nicholas’ unprecedented dial of Ahaz figurae and characterise their function within his commentary. These figurae merit scholarly attention not only because of their astonishing sophistication as epistemic images but also because they illuminate aspects of the transmission of Nicholas’ commentary. Stylistic transformations and even mistakes in later copies of these figurae allow us to identify some tentative groupings within the vast and largely uncharted corpus of Postilla litteralis manuscripts. The dial of Ahaz miracle went on to become a topos of central importance in early modern debates about heliocentrism and the truth claims of scripture. Given that the Postilla litteralis retained its ubiquity well into the seventeenth century, it may well have been Nicholas’ figurae that enabled the dial of Ahaz story to become one of defining miracles of early modern scientific discourse.
Contact details: cyz23@cam.ac.uk
Jasmine Yun Xie
Yiyu Tuzhi異域圖志: Imagining and representing the foreign in Ming China (1368-1644)
Contact details: yx317@cantab.ac.uk
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