“Princes, Monsters, Heroes, Saints: Power, Identity, and the Shining Other in Early English Texts.”

deadline for submissions: 
January 15, 2024
full name / name of organization: 
Sheryll Blaschak
contact email: 

This is an ongoing call for chapter abstracts pursuant to a book proposal which I have discussed with an acquisition’s editor at the University of Amsterdam Press.

I am looking for medievalists interested in contributing chapters for an edited volume which will investigate the uses of gold, glittering, and shining imagery in Early English texts.

This book idea came from my panel “All that Glitters: Gold, God and the Shining Other in the Beowulf Manuscript and Other Early English Texts,” presented at this year’s Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. In this panel, Alexa Gall, of Cornell University and Kevin Jackson of the University of New Mexico presented exceptional papers which intersected in interesting ways and sparked a lively and productive discussion with the audience.

In this volume, I intend to bring together chapters from a wide range of scholars, from early career and independent scholars to those who are well established in the field. The focus will be to explore how tropes of gold and shining connected with ideas about power and identity in Early English texts. Ideally, these chapters will include everything from material considerations of how gold establishes standing and provides agency, to how this imagery contributes to identity construction from the saintly or heroic to the monstrous other in Early English Texts.

Any theoretical approach, including Thing theory or Affect theory, which may not often have been applied to these tropes, would be welcome. I especially invite papers exploring women's status, identity and “otherness,” which speaks to ongoing issues, both in understanding Early English culture and literature as well as understanding similar issues today.

Send your chapter proposal in the form of an abstract to Sheryll Blaschak at eb7549@wayne.edu.

When I have enough abstracts, I will be working with Ms. Cunningham to complete the book proposal. For the sake of establishing a timeline for editing, please also give me an idea of the time frame you would need to write your chapter.

Thank you in advance!

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