"To Know Wisdom and Instruction": The Armenian Literary Tradition at the Library of Congress
April 19 – September 26, 2012
Features the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division’s collection of Armenian manuscripts, fabrics, and printed books as well as items from some other Library divisions. Works range from fourteenth and fifteenth-century gospel books hand-copied by monks to nineteenth-century works on palmistry, fire-fighting, and cotton production, and the first modern Armenian novel. Many of the items are religious in nature, including the first complete Armenian-language printed Bible (Amsterdam, 1666), a richly illuminated missal copied in 1722 for the use of the celebrant of the Armenian liturgy, and a rare nineteenth-century musical manuscript by Pietro Bianchini, the first to transcribe the Armenian liturgy using European musical notation. Twentieth-century publications include a finely illustrated 1962 Soviet edition of the Armenian national epic, David of Sasun, as well as publications from the third Armenian Republic established in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union.
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"To Know Wisdom and Instruction": The Armenian Literary Tradition at the Library of Congress
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Armenia
The ancient country of Armenia, located on the Armenian Plateau in Eastern Anatolia in the middle of a well-traversed land bridge between east and west, is known as “Hayastan” to its people, who call themselves “Hay.”
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From Manuscript to Print
During the sixteenth century, the Armenian homeland was fragmented and divided among powerful clans and nations, each attempting to control it.
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The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
The eighteenth century is considered a period of an Armenian enlightenment as the subjects of Armenian publications expanded to include a broader spectrum of disciplines.
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The Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
Publication in Armenian in the twentieth century centered in the second and third Armenian republics of the period.
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