Driving the Night Away: Early Chapters in the History of Reading.

Description: Discusses the history of silent reading and commercial manuscript production for private reading, starting with Chaucer's BD and including considerations of the Auchinleck manuscript and British Library, MS Harley 978, to suggest that meditative consideration of conscience and silent reading may have been linked social practices. A revised address to the Canadian Society of Medievalists delivered in 2004;