Summer Colloquium: Postgraduates Present

April 25

(Venue Information)

10.30 - 11
Coffee and Registration

Morning Session

11 – 11.45
Tamsyn Rose-Steel (Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Exeter)
The Use of Citation and the Vernacular in the Motets of the Roman de Fauvel

An examination of the motets of BN fr. 146 demonstrates how citation and the vernacular are used to gloss and develop the narrative of the Roman de Fauvel – the story of the wicked horse raised by Fortune to a position of power.  In particular the motet Detractor est/Qui secuntur will be examined: it has an atypical bilingual structure of alternating French and Latin lines.  This paper will look at the significance of the infiltration of the vernacular into the motets, and the conflicting and schizophrenic use of voice; these ideas will be examined in light of Fauvel’s infiltration into the society of the story and depictions and descriptions of him in the manuscript.

11.45 – 12.30
Diane Heath (Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury)
‘A beast, no more’: Doubts and the Transmission of Ideas in a late medieval English Bestiary (Canterbury Cathedral Archives Lit. Ms D.10

How can this 14^thC bestiary present a fruitful problematization of our perceptions of medieval cultural exchange and the transmission of ideas? I shall explore how it contains an unusual discourse on accepted medieval thought modes by comparing the chapter on ‘ursus’ (bear) to decorated initials in earlier works. These comparisons reveal complex uses of homophones and exegesis, linking ursus to orsus and beast to divine, unbecoming “a beast, no more”. However, the cultural norms associated with this “simple” manuscript are further complicated by its doubts, omissions and alterations. How should we interpret the marginal notations of ‘dubio’ in this chapter and so open up new perspectives in pre-existing cultural codes?

12.30 – 1.30
Lunch, bring your own; tea and coffee available

Afternoon Session

1.30 - 2 AGM
All welcome.  Future themes to be discussed.

2 – 2.45
Daniel Thomas (Jesus College, Oxford)
Prisons in Old English: Image and Reality

Whilst much critical attention has been focused upon the resonances of such apparently traditional “Germanic” images as exile and transience in Old English literature, the image of imprisonment – distinct from that of fettering or chaining – has received little consideration. In this paper, therefore, I consider the significance of the prison image and the Anglo-Saxon understanding of it. This consideration falls into two parts. Firstly, I examine the evidence for knowledge of incarceration as a penal practise in Anglo-Saxon England. Secondly, I explore the use of the image of prison and imprisonment and consider its symbolic value.

2.45 – 3.30
James Paz (Department of English, King's College, London)
Perception, Place and Power: the anonymous Life of St Cuthbert and the Lindisfarne Gospels 

This paper asks how issues of perception, place and power are bound up in the anonymous Latin Life of Cuthbert and the Lindisfarne Gospels by taking Peter Brown’s concept of ‘micro-Christendoms’ as its premise, whereby elements of a universal Christianity are made particular.

The body of Christ is an instance of a ‘universal’ sign which becomes ‘localised’: how is this body made perceptible within the Northumbrian landscape? In the Life of Cuthbert, the saintly body of Cuthbert stands in for Christ's body and thus verifies the ‘realness’ of God within a particular place. The artwork of the Lindisfarne Gospels visually references the body of Christ, as Cross, in a distinctly Northumbrian artistic and cultural context. This context is intricately linked to the upper levels of Northumbrian society, so that the Crosses can be said to ‘wear’ the same kind of wealth and status that adorned aristocratic and ecclesiastical bodies. What is more, the remarkable dedication and endurance of the Gospel’s maker may be compared with Cuthbert’s spiritual and physical feats. The bodies of saint and artist-scribe substantiate the existence of God within place, but these are also ‘bodies in pain’. How are they perceived and interpreted within the Northumbrian landscape? And what can they tell us about the formation of pre-Viking age Northumbria identity?  This paper concludes by examining who has the power to perceive these bodies and how these perceptions may relate to the particular ‘version’ of Northumbria shaped by the Life and Gospelbook.

3.30 – 4  Tea

4 – 5  Discussion and Close