Archive

June 25

Jennifer Ledfors
A Medieval Maritime parish and Family: The Gonsons of St Dunstan in the East, London, 1500-1550

This paper looks at the regional identity of the Medieval London parish of St Dunstan in the East in the 16th century as related to the nautical community. It specifically focuses on one family who lived in the parish, and uniquely looks at the interior of the families’ medieval London home. Only a couple members of the family are really well known to Historians, but this paper looks at the lives of other family members who are not as well known. One of the sons was a member of the English regiment of the Order of St John and appears to have been falsely accused of treason, and consequently hanged, drawn and quartered.... A few years later, his father, a popular, and highly respected servant of Henry VIII commits suicide. The paper covers the background of these events, and discusses the ramification of these events for the family in medieval London/ society. The paper looks at the network of various family members: the family was deeply pious and very close knit. They experienced financial and social success, and were active in their community and church, and the paper examines theses aspects of their lives. However, it is the maritime and naval achievements in which they are know, and how history has remembered them.  

Kathryn Hurlock
Power, Authority and the Crusades: The Experience of Wales.

This paper examines the role the crusades played in the struggle for religious and political control between Wales and England from 1188 to 1282. It considers how Canterbury tried to extend its control in Wales through the propagation of the crusade message and the preaching tour of 1188, and how and why this developed over the next one hundred years. The metropolitan claims of St Davids and the use of the crusade by the English kings during this period will also be considered, as will the role the papacy played in moving the focus for crusade organisation in Wales away from the English bishops and back to the Welsh diocese. 

Peter Robson
Alfred's Gothic Ancestry and the Viking Invasions

It is a commonplace of writing on Alfredian accounts of the Gothic sack of Rome that the Goths in some way act as a figuration of the Vikings, and the accounts of Gothic activity can be read as echoes of and commentary on the contemporary situation in England. This paper follows two strands of thought which strongly suggest that this is not so. The opening strand concerns the additions to the West Saxon Royal genealogy commissioned by Alfred, which quite deliberately insert Gothic antecedents where there were none previously. The evidence of the genealogies makes it hard to support an argument for the universal negativity of treatment of the Goths in Alfredian literature. Having opened the possibility, we will then look at the evidence for the depiction of Goths in Alfredian writing, drawing attention to the fact that the presentation may not be so negatively nuanced as supposed. Finally, we will turn to the examination of possible alternative rationales for the depiction of Goths in Alfredian writing, suggesting avenues for future research.  

Muriel Cadilhac
Exhausting friendship: A Lacanian reading of the moral ambiguities in Amis and Amiloun

Amis and Amiloun ostensibly depicts a perfect friendship. This paper, however, questions this assertion and addresses the texts’ very intricate moral ambiguities, that Lacanian psychoanalysis helps resolve. The crux of the matter is that the ideal the protagonists should epitomise is hollow. Every effort is made to save appearances but the multiple instances of situations that should prove perfect friendship only point to its very emptiness. Eventually, a crisis is unavoidable. Usually referred to as a tale of exemplary friendship, Amis and Amiloun would be better qualified as a tale of destruction for the sake of one over privileged relationship under divine auspices.  

Tina Chronopoulos
Who is saying what? The literary sources in the Passion of St Katherine of Alexandria

It is not for nothing that St Katherine is the patron saint of blue-stockings: the first and highly distinctive trial she has to face is a mass-gathering of pagan philosophers, expressly convened to argue against her, only to find themselves comprehensively out-argued. This paper explores the various literary sources that the author of the Passion used to construct Katherine's eloquence. I will briefly look at each 'source' on its own, and will then examine how it is adapted into the Passion. I will then show how these sources - which have not previously been linked with the text in question - can be used to create a context for the author, place and date of composition, of the Passion as we have it.