Middle English Literary Environments

2022-2023 Illinois Medieval Association Symposium

Online and Free

Session Organizer: Michael W. Hollis-George, Millikin University

Session Date: 30 September 2022

Deadline for paper proposals: 1 July 2022

In recent decades and with our enhanced awareness of the climate crisis, literary representations of the environment, broadly defined, have become fertile ground for scholarly work. Often grounded in ecocriticism, this work moves beyond studying what is often loosely-called “nature writing” to a wide range of literature. Such work has certainly examined the non-human environment, but it has also explored urban, monastic, scholarly, and a plethora of other environments as well as inhabitants of those environments and their interrelationships. This session of the 2022-2023 Illinois Medieval Association Symposium will explore environmental representations in Middle English literature. Environment, broadly defined here, follows the Oxford English Dictionary definition: “The physical surroundings or conditions in which a person or other organism lives, develops, etc., or in which a thing exists; the external conditions in general affecting the life, existence, or properties of an organism or object.” We will consider papers exploring any aspect of environmental representation in Middle English literature. Papers presented at this session are eligible for publication in the Illinois Medieval Associations peer-reviewed proceedings journal, Essays in Medieval Studies, published annually by West Virginia University Press.

For full consideration, submit a proposal/abstract of no more than 300 words to mwgeorge.51@gmail.com no later than 1 July 2022. Pending acceptance by the conference committee, the session will be online and completely free.