Adrian Papahagi

Adrian Papahagi (PhD Sorbonne, 2006) is a professor of medieval and early modern literature, and director of the Center for the History of Books and Texts (CODEX). He is a member of the doctoral school of linguistic and literary studies at the Babeș-Bolyai University (SDSLL), and of the doctoral school „Scienze del testo dal medioevo alla modernità: filologie medievali, paleografia, studi romanzi” (STEMMA), University of Rome-La Sapienza. He also teaches a course in codicology in the Diplôme européen d’études médiévales (DEEM) programme, in Rome. He taught the history of the English language at the Sorbonne (Paris IV University), and at the Catholic Institute of Paris. He was a French government scholar at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, a doctoral scholar at the École française d’Oxford, a Mellon fellow at The Warburg Institute in London, and a fellow at New Europe College in Bucharest.

Areas of interest: Old English literature; medieval Germanic literatures; Medieval Latin literature; manuscript studies; history of the book; Shakespeare.

Doctoral supervision in the following areas: medieval English literature in its manuscript context; the works of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries; the history of writing, books, reading, and libraries in the medieval and early modern periods.

Contact: Facultatea de Litere – cabinet M1; adrian.papahagi@ubbcluj.ro.

PhD supervision:

Andrei Crișan, „Reading Wulfstan’s Works in Their Manuscript Context: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 201” (din 2021).

Carmen Oanea, „Reading, Recycling, Rejecting Medieval Books During the Reformation in England and in Transylvania” (din 2022).

Teodora Sava, „Preaching the Coming of Christ in Medieval England: An Edition and Study of the Advent and Christmas Sermons from the Filius Matris Collection” (din 2023).

Mălina Todoran, „Shakespeare’s Garden: A Study of Botanical References in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries” (din 2025).

Taught courses:

LLE 1161/1261 – Medieval and Early Modern English Literature (BA)

LLE 2161 – Shakespeare (BA)

LLE 5122/5222 – Manuscript Studies (BA)

LME 2109 – Shakespeare and Monarchy (MA)

LME 1107 – Early Medieval Irish Culture and Civilisation (MA)

Past courses:

LLE 6121 – History of the English Language

LDR 1102 – Paradigme contemporane în cercetarea literară

Gramatică comparată a limbilor germanice

Research projects (selection):

2025-2028 – Team leader, UEFISCDI PN-IV-P1-PCE-2023-0465, ‘Medieval Books in the Early Modern Period: The Case of Cluj in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, € 230 000.
2020-2022 – Principal investigator, RO-CULTURA-A1-3/2020/31.01.2020, „FRAGMED-Un puzzle transilvan: reconstituind cultura medievală din fragmente de codici” – ‘FRAGMED-A Transylvanian Puzzle: Reconstructing Medieval Culture from Manuscript Fragments’, € 129 000.
2019-2022 – Partener, co-principal investigator, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) 182173, ‘Fragmentarium Phase II’, CHF 1 331 905.
2015-2017 – Team leader, UEFISCDI PNII-RU-TE-2014-4-1795, ‘Pre-Reformation Book Production and Use in Transylvania: Surviving Manuscripts, Incunabula, Book Lists, and Indirect Sources’, € 123 000.
2010-2013 – Team leader, UEFISCDI PNII-RU-TE-2010-290, ‘Codicological Vocabulary and Census of Western Medieval Manuscripts in Romania’, € 170 000.
2007-2008 – Director, NEC-Link grant to create a course on Manuscript Studies at the Babeș-Bolyai University, $ 11 000.

Publilications (selection):

Books:

Shakespeare interpretat de Adrian Papahagi, Iași: Polirom, 2020 – . Published so far: vol. 1, Sonete – Romeo și Julieta, 2020; vol. 2, Visul unei nopți de vară – Cum vă place, 2020; vol. 3. Titus Andronicus – Hamlet, 2021; vol. 4, Totu-i bine când se sfârșește bine – Măsură pentru măsură, 2021; vol. 5, Troilus și Cresida – Timon din Atena, 2022; vol. 6, Othello – Poveste de iarnă, 2022; vol. 7, Pericle – Cymbeline – Furtuna, 2023; vol. 8, Regele Ioan – Richard al II-lea, 2024).
An Old English Primer, Cluj: Presa Universitară Clujeană, ²2024 (with M. Buzec and A. Crișan)
Books from Lost Libraries: The Medieval Dioceses of Cenad, Oradea, and Transylvania, Cluj: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2023.
A Transylvanian Puzzle: Reconstructing Medieval Culture from Manuscript Fragments. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Library of the Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, 8 February-8 April 2022, Cluj: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2022.
Providence and Grace: Lectures on Shakespeare’s Problem Plays and Romances, Cluj: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2020.
Manuscrisele medievale occidentale din România. Census, Iași: Polirom, 2018 (with A. C. Dincă, A. Mârza).
Wyrd. Ideea destinului în literatura engleză veche, Bucharest: Eikon, 2014.
A. Papahagi, C. Papahagi, A-C Dincă, A. Mârza, Vocabularul cărții manuscrise, Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2013.
Boethiana mediaevalia, Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2010.
Jeunesse et vieillesse: Images médiévales de l’âge en littérature anglaise, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005 (ed. with Leo Carruthers).

Articles:

‘The English Bard and French Theory’, Linguaculture 16.2 (2025), pp. 11-28.
‘Two Connected Medieval Manuscripts of Nicolaus de Lyra’s Postilla in Cluj and Alba Iulia’, Philobiblon 30.1 (2025), 21-37.
‘The Singularity of the Old English Boethius’, in The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c. 850-950, ed. Amy Faulkner, Francis Leneghan, Turnhout: Brepols, 2024, pp. 283-306.
Entries ‘Alcebiades’, ‘Artemisia’, ‘Boloigne’, ‘Campayne’, ‘Cedasus’, ‘Demociones daughter’, ‘Teuta’ in The Chaucer Encyclopaedia, ed. Richard Newhauser, Vincent Gillespie, Jessica Rosenfeld, Katie Walter, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2023, pp. 37-38, 124-125, 234-235, 273-274, 315-316, 542-543, 1814.
‘A Medieval Flemish Book of Hours in Early Modern Transylvania (MS 684, Lucian Blaga Central University Library, Cluj)’, in Prayer Books and Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe/ Gebetbücher und Frömmigkeit in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Maria Crăciun, Volker Leppin, Katalin Luffy, Ulrich A. Wien, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2023, 81-96.
‘Words with Masks: An Essay on the Nomenclature of Some Late Medieval Initials’, in Les Mots au Moyen Âge/Words in the Middle Ages, ed. Victoria Turner, Vincent Debiais (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 46), Turnhout: Brepols, 2020, 5-20.
‘Reformation and Transformation: Medieval Liturgical Manuscripts in Early Modern Transylvania’, in The Image of Piety in Medieval Manuscripts in Slovakia and in Europe, ed. Eva Veselovská, Bratislava: Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, 2021, pp. 67-82.
‘In the Margins of the Predestination Controversy: The Manuscript Context of the Hincmar Mock Epitaph’, Catholic Historical Review 105 (2019), 52-74.
‘The Library of Petrus Gotfart de Corona, Rector of the University of Vienna in 1473’, The Library 20.1 (2019), 29-46
‘The Lorsch Gospels in the Context of the Ada Group’, in Die Handschriften der Hofschule Kaiser Karls des Großen. Individuelle Gestalt und europäisches Kulturerbe. Ergebnisse der Trierer Tagung vom 10.–12. Oktober 2018, ed. Michael Embach, Claudine Moulin, Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Trier: Verlag für Geschichte und Kultur, 2019, 129-155.
‘A Fragment of the Graduale Varadiense at the Romanian Academy Library in Cluj (Kolozsvár)’, Magyar Könyvszemle 133 (2017), 455-59.
‘Gothic Script and Humanistic Fashion in Fifteenth-Century Oradea: the Palaeography of John Vitéz’s Book of Letters (Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. 431)’, Philobiblon: 21.2 (2016), 5-14.
‘An Eleventh-Century Fragment of the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum in Beneventan Script (Cluj, Biblioteca Academiei Române, Cod. lat. 8, Fol. 72)’, Mediaeval Studies 78 (2016), pp. 277-283.
‘Lost Libraries and Surviving Manuscripts: The Case of Medieval Transylvania’, Library & Information History 31 (2015), pp. 35-53.
‘Libro de moralites: volgarizzamenti inediti in un manoscritto del secolo XV (Alba Iulia, Biblioteca Batthyaneum, Ms. II.106)’, Aevum 86.2 (2012), 783-798.
‘An Ethiopian Magical Manuscript at the University Library of Cluj, Romania (BCU, MS 681)’, in International Journal of African Historical Studies 45. 1 (2012), 103-11 (cu Bogdan Burtea).
‘An Anglo-Saxon Palimpsest from Fleury: Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 342 (290)’, in Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England, ed. by Leo Carruthers, Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, and Tatjana Silec, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 21-33.
‘From Boethius’s Orbes Simile to the Wheel of Fate Metaphor in the Old English Version of the Consolatio Philosophiae (IV, prose 6.15)’, Scriptorium 63 (2009), pp. 3-29.
‘The Transmission of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae in the Carolingian Age’, Medium Ævum 78 (2009), pp. 1-15.
‘Glossae collectae on Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy in Paris, BN Lat. MS 13953’, Chora 6 (2008), 291-337.
‘Destin et providence (Consolatio Philosophiae IV, pr. 6). La réception du néoplatonisme boécien à l’époque carolingienne’, in Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Comptes rendus des séances de l’année 2006, Janvier-Mars, 671-711.
‘Another Source for the Old English Dict of Cato 73’, Notes & Queries 52.1 (2005), pp. 8-10.
‘(Ge)wyrd: Emendations to Three Anonymous Old English Homilies and Saints’ Lives’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 106.3 (2005), pp. 311-314.
‘Res pæne inusitata: les traductions de la Consolatio Philosophiæ du Roi Alfred et de Notker Labeo’, in The Medieval Translator 8, ed. by Rosalynn Voaden, Teresa Sanchez-Roura, René Tixier, Turnhout: Brepols, 2003, pp. 71-87.
‘The Anglo-Saxon Hero: Angel or Demon?’, in Anges et démons, ed. Leo Carruthers, Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2003, pp. 75-100.

Online publications:

Catalogue of medieval Latin manuscript fragments from the Academy Library in Cluj and the Batthyaneum Library in Alba Iulia on Fragmentarium.ms.