Today: Jane Taylor on “Hungrie Shadows”

Jane Taylor, Professor of Medieval French Literature and Principal of Collingwood College, Durham University will speak today, Tuesday 20th May, as part of the Exeter Centre for Medieval Studies’ Research Seminar programme, and as an invited speaker of the Department of Modern Languages. Professor Taylor’s talk is entitled:

‘”Hungrie Shadows”: what became of Chrétien de Troyes in the Renaissance?’

Her focus will be the translator Pierre Sala, who translated Chrétien de Troyes in the 1500s, and will encompass translation and Arthuriana in the Renaissance.

The seminar will take place at 4pm in room E, Queen’s Building. This is a change from the originally advertised room.

The paper will be followed by a wine reception in Queen’s SCR at 5-ish, sponsored by DML.

20 May: Taylor on Chrétien de Troyes in the Renaissance

Jane Taylor, Professor of Medieval French Literature at Durham University will address the Exeter Medieval Studies’ Research Seminar on Tuesday 20 May. Her talk will be of particular interest to Medievalists, Early Modernists and all those involved in translation studies. The title is:

“Hungrie Shadows”: What became of Chrétien de Troyes in the Renaissance?

Her focus will be the translator Pierre Sala, who translated Chretien de Troyes in the 1500s, and will encompass translation and Arthuriana in the Renaissance.

The event will take place Tuesday 20th May at 4-5.30pm in MR3 (room to be confirmed nearer the time). Wine will be served afterwards as is customary at the Medieval Seminar.

Tuesday: Griffiths on Lydgate’s Fall

The Exeter Centre for Medieval Studies seminar welcomes Dr Jane Griffiths from Bristol, speaking on:

‘THE WORDS OF THE TRANSLATOR’: MEDIATING LYDGATE’S FALL OF PRINCES
Tues 29 April, 4-5.30, Queen’s MR3

Jane Griffiths has published extensively on medieval and renaissance poetics and concepts of literary authority, on John Skelton and Stephen Hawes, and on the reception of medieval works in the renaissance. She also writes on twentieth-century poetry and is herself a published poet.

There will be a drinks reception after the paper.

CFP: Being Human at Durham (postgraduate conference)

Call for Papers - Being Human

Postgraduate Conference in Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Durham University, 4th August 2008

Durham University’s Medieval and Renaissance Postgraduate Discussion Group is hosting a postgraduate conference on 4th August 2008, on the theme of ‘Being Human’ in the medieval and renaissance periods. The aim of the conference is to explore aspects of human experience and the human condition from a strongly interdisciplinary perspective, and we welcome contributions from any branch of medieval and renaissance studies. The keynote speaker will be Helen Cooper, Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Possible topics for papers might include: the physical body; birth and death; spirit and flesh; humanity created, fallen, redeemed and restored; humanity and divinity; mind and consciousness; masculinity, femininity and sexuality; magic; superhumanity and subhumanity; madness, illness and disfigurement; real people and lived experience; fashioning ‘the self’; man’s place in the world and woman’s place in the world.

The conference will be held in Bishop Cosin’s Library on Palace Green, a magnificent location between Durham Cathedral and Castle. Due to generous funding from the CMRS in Durham, there will be no conference fee.

Papers should last no more than twenty minutes.

Please send abstracts of approximately 250 words to mailto: laura.jose@durham.ac.ukby 20th May 2008.

Research Masterclass at Southampton

From the University of Southampton, an event of potential interest for postgraduates and post-docs in medieval and early modern studies:

This year’s fifth Reuter lecture, in memory of Professor Tim Reuter, will be given at 6 pm on Wednesday 18 June by Professor W.C. Jordan, Professor of Medieval History at Princeton, who has taken as his title ‘Anti-corruption campaigns in the thirteenth-century’.

During the day before the lecture we are holding a masterclass, chaired by Professor Jordan. There will be an opportunity for six (academically) young scholars to present their work in the form of a 25 minute paper, followed by discussion and commentary by Prof Jordan and the staff of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture. A prize of £100 will be awarded for the best paper on the day, and advice will be given to all paper givers on submission to the Journal of Medieval History or other appropriate journals.

The masterclass is open to postgraduate research students and postdoctoral scholars, including those employed in temporary or part-time positions in universities, archives, libraries etc. Papers may be in any subject area (not just history) and on any topic falling within the period c. 400 CE to 1550 CE. Interdisciplinary papers are welcome.

So that we can select paper givers for the masterclass, please send an abstract of c. 150 words, a brief CV and a short recommendation from supervisor or colleague to Professor Ros King, Director of the CMRC, at the email address below by Friday 2 May. We will let you know by 9 May if you have been selected. If you are not successful on this occasion we will hope to invite you to a subsequent event. Expenses up to a maximum of £75 will be available for each paper giver.

Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture
School of Humanities, University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Southampton SO17 1BF United Kingdom
www.soton.ac.uk/cmrc, r.king@soton.ac.uk

CFP: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England

After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England

Oxford, 16th-18th April 2009

An international conference organised by the Faculty of English, University of Oxford, in association with the Bodleian Library, marking the 600th anniversary of the publication of Arundel’s Constitutions.

* Mapping Chronologies
* The dynamics of Orthodox Reform
* Humanism & Intellectual History
* Literary Self-Consciousness & Literary History
* Discerning the Discourse: Language & Spirituality
* Heresy & its Textual Afterlife

Plenary speakers: Sarah Beckwith, Jeremy Catto, Anne Hudson, David Lawton and Miri Rubin.

Please send 500 word abstracts by 31st May 2008 to Vincent Gillespie, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford OX2 6QA.

Tuesday: Watts on Late Medieval Politics

Next Tuesday at the Centre for Medieval Studies seminar:

Dr John Watts, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICS IN LATER MEDIEVAL EUROPE, c.1300-c.1500

Tuesday 11 March, 4pm, Queen’s LT4.2

John Watts has published extensively on political culture in the later middle ages, including his highly influential Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, 1996) and recent articles on the scope of vernacular politics in the period. He is currently writing the late medieval-early Tudor volume of the New Oxford History of England, and a book related to his talk on Tuesday.

A drinks reception follows the seminar. All welcome.

Tomorrow: Mills on Mischief in the Bible Moralisee

The next paper in the Exeter Medieval Seminar Series will take place Tuesday 26 February, 4pm, in Queen’s MR3

DR ROBERT MILLS (King’s College London): THE SODOMITE, THE DEVIL, THE FRIEND, AND HER LOVER: UNHOLY RELATIONS IN THE BIBLE MORALISÉE

Eamon Duffy on Praying to Images

Next week Professor Eamon Duffy will deliver the first Nicholas Orme Lecture in Medieval History at Exeter University.

PRAYING TO IMAGES IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Wednesday 13 February, 5.15, Queen’s LT2

Before the lecture, Professor Duffy will be conducting a seminar and text workshop on the same theme at 3pm in Queen’s MR3. A drinks reception will follow the evening lecture.

Eamon Duffy is Professor of the History of Christianity at Magdalene College, Cambridge and has published extensively on late medieval and early modern popular religious beliefs and practices, on Christian art and material culture, and on the history of the papacy. His books include the seminal The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1570 (1992), Saints and Sinners (1997), translated into many languages, including Chinese, and The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (2001), winner of the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. His latest book, Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers 1240-1570, appeared in 2007.

For further information contact Simon Barton (s.f.barton@ex.ac.uk) or Elliot Kendall (e.r.kendall@ex.ac.uk).

Ostrich Eggs and Miraculous Powers in Fifteenth-Century Egypt

‘THE DEATH OF THE YOUNG MAN IS BETTER THAN HIS LIFE’
Ostrich Eggs and Miraculous Powers in Fifteenth-Century Egypt

Professor Dionisius Agius will be speaking to the Exeter Medieval Seminar next week, Tuesday 5 February, 5.15 in Queen’s MR3.

Dionisius Agius is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Material Culture at IAIS. He has published extensively on maritime ethnography and Arabic language across a number of periods, and is author of the prize-winning Seafaring in the Arabian Gulf and Oman: The People of the Dhow (Kegan Paul, 2005). His talk offers us the chance to see some of the fruits (or eggs) of a major AHRC-funded exploration at Quseir al-Qadim on the Egyptian Red Sea coast.

There will be a wine reception after the seminar.