medieval

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE DRAMA SOCIETY

Call for Papers: Leeds IMC 2017

Passion, Power, and Rhetoric: Latin Influences on Early Drama

The twenty-fourth International Medieval Congress (IMC) will take place in Leeds, UK, from 3-6 July 2017.  The IMC seeks to provide an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of all aspects of Medieval Studies. However, every year, the IMC chooses a special thematic strand which – for 2017 – is ‘Otherness’. This focus has been chosen for its wide application across all centuries and regions and its impact on all disciplines devoted to this epoch.

“[M]edievalism now features in hundreds of currently taught university and college-based courses, especially in English Literature departments across and beyond the English-speaking world...” writes Louise D’Arcens in the introduction to the new Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (2016). This session will explore the implications of teaching medieval studies through or alongside medievalism(s). How do students—many of whom are newly engaged with studies of medieval topics—perceive the distinction between medieval and medievalism? To what degree does medievalism affect/inflect non-literary studies of the Middle Ages (in history or art history courses, for example)?

Whether it is tweeting Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, making witnesses of his poems both in and out of the codex available to scholars worldwide, or engaging in digital prosopography, the “Digital Turn” in recent literary scholarship provides heretofore unavailable opportunities for engagement with the poetry of John Lydgate.  However, this is not the first time the introduction of new technology has effected reception, understanding, and interpretation of the poet.  The shift from manuscript to print spread Lydgate’s poems in numbers that were not possible before, while modern editorial practices developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have created a set of “standard” editions of the poet’s works, for good and ill.

The shadow of Geoffrey Chaucer loomed large over the century after his death.  Later poets such as John Lydgate used words coined by him, explicitly referenced Chaucer’s mastery of poetry, and mentioned their relationship with him in the development of their poetic personae and the writing of their poetic works.  These connections, in turn, have left a tradition of scholarship that takes such conceits at face value and maligns the poetry of the fifteenth century for allegedly not being the equal of Chaucer’s.

Call For Papers for the Vernacular Devotional Cultures Group, Kalamazoo 2017

The Vernacular Devotional Cultures Group is sponsoring three sessions at the 52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo for 2017: