Author: Henrike Lähnemann

Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Fellow at St Edmund Hall, and Co-Director of Oxford Medieval Studies.

Medieval Studies Academic Mentor and Communications Officer

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19/08/2024

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The Humanities Division Interdisciplinary Master’s Programmes are advertising an Academic Mentor & Communications Officer Joint Position for the MSt in Medieval Studies and Oxford Medieval Studies (OMS). The deadline for applications is 2 September 2024. For an insight into the duties involved, read the blog post by two previous postholders, Dr Luisa Ostacchini:  A Medieval Monologium, and Dr Karl Kinsella Heralding Oxford Medieval Studies.

Academic Mentor MedSt OMS 2024-25Download

The role of the Academic Mentor is to support the work of the programme convenors by fostering a group identity for the incoming cohort of students. The Academic Mentor will make an important contribution to the experience of students on this course.

The role of Oxford Medieval Studies (OMS) Communication Officer is to prepare the termly Medieval Booklet, send out a weekly news bulletin, and coordinate graduate students working with OMS.

The position will be offered for one year in the first instance. The holder will be expected to work 64 hours during Michaelmas term and 56 hours during each of Hilary  and Trinity terms (for a total of 176 hours over the year).  The hours should be divided flexibly between the MSt and OMS portions of the job, with a typical split of two-thirds MSt and one-third OMS. The remuneration offered is at point 7.1 of the casual pay spine; in 2023-24 this was £18.98 per hour.

Duties of the joint position

The role of the Academic Mentor is to:

  • help foster a sense of group identity and cohesion
  • contribute to the research mentoring and professional development of the students during the course
  • establish an informal space for group interaction

This will involve:

  • directing students towards relevant events and activities and helping them to navigate sources of information, including signposting to relevant learning opportunities and skills development provision
  • providing information and guidance on academic choice, including programme options and further study
  • discussing with students their future plans (whether professional or academic) and offering appropriate guidance by directing students towards relevant offices in the University
  • leading group discussions of academic and professional topics as may be relevant, depending on students’ needs
  • providing appropriate guidance on drafting research proposals for doctoral applications
  • coaching students in study skills (e.g., writing)
  • readiness to serve as ‘a helpful ear’ to students’ academic concerns or anxieties, liaising with the convenors where appropriate and/or where the mentor’s own concerns arise about a student. The mentor will not act as a welfare officer; however, they are advised to consult the convenors or the course administration should welfare issues arise so that students may be directed to the proper sources of support
  • The role will support the more formal work of the programme convenor to whom the Academic Mentor should report regularly and consult for guidance on offering advice to students (e.g., on University procedures)

The above is meant to act as a broad guidance; it is expected that the role will be flexible and responsive to the needs of individual cohorts. 

The role of OMS Communications Officer is to:

  • Prepare the termly Medieval Booklet for publication two weeks before term starts
  • Write and circulate a weekly OMS email news bulletin
  • Coordinate graduate students working with OMS as events and social media officers
  • Help to administer the medieval.ox.ac.uk blog and the mailing list
  • Encourage graduate participation in blogging, application to OMS small grants, and so on
  • Work with the Directors of Oxford Medieval Studies to promote medieval studies

We welcome applications either from postdoctoral candidates, or candidates with relevant experience. Depending on availability and expertise, there might be scope for some collaborative teaching (for which additional payment would be made).

How to apply

Please write a letter of application outlining your suitability for the role, and send it, together with a CV, to interdisciplinary@humanities.ox.ac.uk by 2 September. Please ask two referees to send their references to the same address by the same date. Interviews for shortlisted applicants will take place in late August, and successful applicants will be expected to start from the beginning of Michaelmas term 2024.

An Introduction to Middle High German

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02/08/2024

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Workshop and Launch

The new Introduction to Middle High German by Howard Jones and Martin H. Jones (OUP 2024) is a dedicated student edition of The Oxford Guide to Middle High German, designed for taught courses and self-study. It provides an accessible overview of the grammar and lexis of the language suitable for introductory-level students and includes thirty extensively-annotated texts with explanatory notes suitable for use in teaching. It is accompanied by a companion website which gives open access to further online resources for the study of Middle High German.

Introduction to the workshop by Howard Jones and Henrike Lähnemann

The workshop was designed as a test case to show ways of using the ‘Introduction’ within a university setting or for self-study . Participants got access to the online version and worked with it in groups ranging from beginners to experts on aspects of Middle High German. The “Translathon” consisted of a group competition to translate and comment on passages of the Middle High German text ‘Helmbrecht’.

Commentary by Howard Jones on ‘Helmbrecht’, lines 913 to 1047Download
Translatathon with six competing groups, translating lines 984 to 1035, featuring

00:00 Group 1: Nicholas Champness, Nina Cornell, Philip Flacke, Anna Vines
00:38 Group 2: Sharon Baker, Monty Powell, Willa Stonecipher, An Van Camp
01:14 Group 3: Theodore Luketina, Daniel Ruin, Nina Unland, Hestia Jingyan Zhang
02:04 Group 4: Reuben Bignell, Greta Evans, Andreas Groeger
03:01 Group 5: Joshua Booth, Lia Neill, Catriona Robertson
03:49 Group 6: Isabelle Gregory, Wilfred Lamont, William Thurlwell

The workshop took place on Saturday 2 November 2024, 2-6pm, Taylor Institution Library, Room 2, University of Oxford. Participants were students from first-year undergraduate to doctoral level – a range of people, in fact, who wanted to acquire, practise, and improve their knowledge of Middle High German. No previous knowledge of Middle High German was required. Organisers Sarah Bowden, Howard Jones, and Henrike Lähnemann

Funded Doctoral Position: The Seven Sages of Rome

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31/07/2024

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The research project “The Seven Sages of Rome Revisited: Striving for an Alternative Literary History”  invites applications for one doctoral research associate: FU Berlin advertisement of the position

The project is funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin as part of the Berlin University Alliance/Oxford University Einstein Visiting Fellowship scheme. The selected postholder will work closely with the PIs of the project, Professor Dr Jutta Eming, Freie Universität Berlin and Dr Ida Tóth, University of Oxford (Einstein BUA/Oxford Visiting Fellow 2024-27). 

Please note that the application deadline is 20 August 2024.

The position is funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin as part of the Berlin University Alliance/Oxford University Einstein Visiting Fellowships scheme. The Doctoral Research Associate will participate in the project “The Seven Sages of Rome Revisited: Striving for an Alternative Literary History”. The selected postholder will be jointly supervised by the PIs of the project, Professor Dr Jutta Eming, Freie Universität Berlin and Dr Ida Toth, University of Oxford (Einstein BUA/Oxford Visiting Fellow 2024-27).
The research project “The Seven Sages of Rome Revisited: Striving for an Alternative Literary History” focuses on one of the most popular and least studied works of pre-modern world literature. Transmitted in over thirty languages and attested through hundreds of manuscripts and early printed editions, this tradition provides ample scope for exploring the extant material from textual, intercultural, and intersectional literary perspectives. The Einstein BUA/Oxford research project proposes to undertake an interdisciplinary, collaborative and comparative philological, literary, and cultural analysis in Byzantine/Medieval Latin and Medieval German and Early Modern Studies. Its goal is to reassess and redefine the traditional approach to the SSR and to medieval literature in general.

Job description:
The Doctoral Research Associate will study one specific set of motifs – Wisdom, Power, and Gender – that is common to all surviving traditions of the Seven Sages in the German and/or Greek textual tradition. The main duty will be to conduct research on a doctoral project designed along these research lines. The postholder will work under the direction of Professor Dr Jutta Eming and Dr Ida Toth as well as collaborating with the other members of the research group. The postholder will assist in planning and organisation of scholarly events (lectures, seminars, workshops, outreach programmes), in publication projects, and will play a key role in securing the online visibility and digital presence of the project. 
This is an exciting opportunity for a highly motivated doctoral candidate with strong interests in wisdom literature, intersectionality, and concepts of power. The successful candidate will join a team of textual and literary scholars, who play an active role in the current efforts to reassess traditional literary canons and to create an alternative, and much more nuanced, understanding of pre-modern global literary history.

Requirements:
• A Master’s degree qualification (MA, MSt, MPhil or the equivalent) in a subject/field relevant to the Project (German Studies, Byzantine Studies/Medieval Latin)

Desirable:
• Above-average Masters’ degree grade 
• Doctoral project on the Seven Sages of Rome
• Excellent command of the spoken and written English language
• Demonstrable interest in the project’s focus area (Wisdom – Power – Gender)
• Ability to work independently
• Commitment to team-building and teamwork
• Willingness to engage in interdisciplinary exchange

Application materials:
• An application letter/statement of purpose (one page)
• An outline of the planned dissertation project (two pages)
• A curriculum vitae with list of publications (if applicable) 
• Official transcripts of all previous degrees and university diplomas
• A copy of master’s thesis or a sample of written work (max. 25 pages)

How to apply:
Your application materials should state the identifier Predoc_JE_BUA_SSoR_2_24. They should be combined in a single PDF document and sent electronically to Ms Sylwia Bräuer (s.braeuer@fu-berlin.de). Two letters of recommendation from university-level teachers should be submitted separately. They should be addressed and emailed to the project PIs Jutta Eming (j.eming@fu-berlin.de ) and Ida Toth (ida.toth@history.ox.ac.uk).

Report on the Oxford-Berlin Workshop ‘The Seven Sages of Rome as a Global Narrative Tradition’

11-12 November 2022, organised by Ida Toth (Oxford) and Jutta Eming (Berlin)

The Seven Sages of Rome (SSR) is a title commonly used for one of the most widely distributed pre-modern collections of stories, which – remarkably – also happens to be barely known today, even among medievalists and early modernists. Several early versions of the SSR exist in Greek (Syntipas), Arabic (Seven Viziers), Hebrew (Mishle Sendebar), Latin (Dolopathos, Historia septem sapientum), Persian (Sindbād-nameh) and Syriac (Sindbād) as well as in the later translations into Armenian, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, German, English, French, Hungarian, Icelandic, Polish, Russian, Scottish, Serbian, Swedish, Spanish, Romanian, Turkish and Yiddish. The multilingual traditions of the SSR, with their many intercultural links, cannot be adequately understood within the current division of research disciplines into distinct medieval and modern linguistic areas. To mend this deficiency, the workshop has invited specialists in affiliated fields to address the problems of surveying the long history of creative adaptations associated with the SSR. The participants will consider the complexities of the philological, literary, and historical analysis of the SSR in many of its attested versions across the pre-modern and early modern periods. The workshop is envisaged as a forum for a robust discussion on possible ways of advancing the current scholarship of the SSR, and as an opportunity to strengthen the inter-institutional collaboration involving specialists based at the universities in Oxford and Berlin, and more broadly.

The workshop will start with a session in the Weston Library on Friday morning where the group will meet other Oxford medievalists at the Coffee Morning, followed by a view of special collections in the library. While this is for speakers only, their is limited capacity to attend the following talks at the Ioannou Centre. If interested, please contact the workshop co-ordinator Josh Hitt.

FRIDAY, 11 NOVEMBER 2022, THE IOANNOU CENTRE

  • 2 pm – 3 pm: Beatrice Gründler, Kalīla and Dimna – AnonymClassic: Methodology and Practical Implementations (via Zoom, 1st-fl Seminar Room)
  • 4 pm – 5 pm: Daniel Sawyer, Forgotten books: The application of Unseen Species Models to the Survival of Culture (In person, Outreach Room)

SATURDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2022, THE IOANNOU CENTRE

10 am – 11.30 am

  • Jutta Eming, The Seven Sages of Rome in Literary History and Genre Theory
  • David Taylor, Re-examining the Evidence of the Syriac Book of Sindbād
  • Ida Toth, The Byzantine Book of Syntipas: Approaches and Directions
  • Emilie van Opstall, The Representation of Women in Byzantine Syntipas and Latin Dolopathos

12 pm – 1.30 pm

  • Bettina Bildhauer, Consent in the German Version of the Seven Sages of Rome
  • Rita Schlusemann, Genre, Dissemination and Multimodality of the Septem sapientum Romae, especially in Dutch and German
  • Niko Kunkel, Statistics and Interpretation: Annotating the German Sieben Weise Meister
  • Ruth von Bernuth, Yiddish Seven Masters

4.30 pm: Tea and a guided tour of St Edmund Hall with Henrike Lähnemann

5.45 pm: Evensong at New College

Appendix: List of manuscripts and early printed books in the Bodleian Library:

  • Arabic: Pococke 400
  • Greek: Barocc. 131 and Laud. 8
  • Armenian: MS. Arm. e. 33 and MS. Canonici Or. 131
  • Hebrew (Mishle Sendebar/Fables of Sendebar): MS. Heb. d. 11 (ff. 289-294) and MS. Bodl. Or. 135 (ff. 292-300r)
  • Yiddish: Opp. 8. 1115 Mayse fun Ludvig un Aleksander and Opp. 8. 1070 Zibn vayzn mansters fun Rom
  • Welsh Jesus College MS 111
  • Middle English: B. Balliol College MS. 354
  • English, early printed book: The History of the Seven Wise Masters of Rome. Now newly Corrected better Explained in many places and enlarged with many pretty Pictures etc. London, Printed for John Wright, next to the Globe in Little-Brittain, 1671

Image: British Library, Add. MS. 15685, f. 83r (XIV century, Venice)

CfP: Staging Silence from Antiquity to the Renaissance

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12/07/2024

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Call for Papers

3–4 July 2025 / St John’s College, Cambridge. Deadline for paper submissions 9 January 2025

This two-day, in-person conference will explore developing traditions of silence in dramatic texts from antiquity to the Renaissance. Papers are sought from scholars across a range of fields, including classical reception, comparative literature, and medieval and/or early modern English literature. Topics may include:

  • mute characters and/or characters who never appear on stage;
  • characters who gain or lose the power of speech (welcoming perspectives e.g. from disability studies);
  • dramatic silence as represented on page and/or stage (e.g. bookhistory approaches and/or performance studies);
  • the history and/or function of animals on stage;
  • the relationship of dramatic silence to music and/orinarticulacy;
  • representations of dramatic silence in contemporary discursivetexts;
  • dumb shows;
  • silence in neo-Latin drama.

Speakers will include Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg), Barbara Ravelhofer (Durham), and Julie Stone Peters (Columbia). Please submit a 250-word abstract for a 20-minute paper to John Colley (stagingsilence@gmail.com) by noon on Thursday 9 January 2025. Preference will be given to papers with an interdisciplinary and/or comparative focus. It’s anticipated that early career speakers will be able to apply for travel bursaries.

Woodcut depicting characters from ‘Andria’, including mute and unstaged characters –– ‘Terencius’ (Strasbourg: Grüninger, 1496), sig. b1v [Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, GW M45481]

Launch of the ‘Life of Nuns’

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17/06/2024

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During the Medievalist Coffee Morning on Friday, 21 June 2024, Henrike Lähnemann launched her new book The Life of Nuns. Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers 2024, open access: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0397
To purchase a paper copy with a 20% discount, use the code LONHL_24 at checkout

On show were the following five manuscripts, all available digitised via https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/, three from the Cistercian convent of Medingen near Lüneburg (http://medingen.seh.ox.ac.uk/) and two Rules for female convents:

Following this, there was a presentation by Stacie Vos (Ann Ball Bodley Visiting Fellow in Women’s History) talk about Women doing medieval studies in the early 20th century. Stacie reflected on the legacies of several early-20th-century women medievalists who pursued academic and extra-academic careers. She started the group ‘Enclosure’ which January 2021 to February 2024 was hosted at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages under enclosure.mml.ox.ac.uk, now archived at the Bodleian Library Web Archive.

***

It all started with a mistake: ‘Der Spiegel’, a widely read news magazine in Germany, ran a double-spread article on the big research project which Eva Schlotheuber and I direct, the edition of 1.200 letters from the Benedictine convent Lüne in North Germany. In the interview for it, we had talked about how important education by the nuns was for the ‘Lehrkinder’, children educated at the convent. The girls would come into the community, aged 7 to 9, and then get a thorough grounding in a wide range of discipline such as music, as pictured in the scene from a text book from Kloster Ebstorf.

Teaching Music in the Convents (Ebstorf, Klosterarchiv V 3, 15th century, fols 200v–201r)

Der Spiegel’ turned our phrase of ‘Lehrkinder’ into ‘die Kinder der Nonnen’ (the children of the nuns) – hinting at sex and scandal behind convent walls (in 2/2020 ‘So colourful was the life of nuns in the Middle Ages’).

This sparked further media interest and the Ullstein publishing house approached us because it had piqued their interest. When we explained that the attention-grabbing headline about “the nuns had children” was based on a misunderstanding, they were slightly disappointed – but then offered us the opportunity to set the record straight. And, arguably, what we could offer was much more exciting: the colourful and detailed accounts of lively, intellectual, strategic, argumentative, powerful women, shaping religion and politics of their times, looking after the girls (despite or even because they were their spiritual and not biological daughters!), negotiating business deals, writing, painting, composing and influencing the way we live today through their books, songs, and art.

‘The Life of Nuns’ tries to capture the richness of the life of these medieval nuns by incorporating as much primary source material as possible. Each of the big topics – such as Education, Music, and yes: Love and Friendship – starts with an account taken from the diary of a nun who lived at the end of the 15th century in the convent St Crucis in Braunschweig. The anonymous author covers the high feasts – celebrating the entry of new nuns, welcoming illustrious visitors –  and the everyday mundane events – lice, Lebkuchen (gingerbread), laundry. And we end every of our chapters with the presentation of a significant art work from the convents: the impressive wall paintings done in the 14th century by “three nuns all called Gertrud” in Wienhausen, the largest medieval world map in Ebstorf (30 goatskins sewn together), tapestries, statues, stained glass, the oldest spectacles in the world (fallen through the floorboard cracks in the nuns’ choir) – an embarrassment of riches from a world that few people even know existed. That is particularly true for an Anglophone audience since so much of the evidence is lost due mainly to the dissolution of the monasteries but also a repurposing of surviving architecture and treasures. Compare Kloster Wienhausen and Godstow Abbey: in Wienhausen we have got the full set of monastic buildings, cloisters, huge grain stores, cells, corridors, imposing Gothic nuns choir and more – and everything that furnished it: stained glass, wall paintings, sculptures, down to the different set of dresses for the statues.

The Cistercian Convent of Wienhausen from the South: Magazine (left) and Nuns’ Choir. Photograph: Henrike Lähnemann
Filming at the ruins of one Godstow Abbey near Oxford

In Godstow, on the other hand, we can sense the dimensions of its former power by looking at the impressively long surrounding wall of enclosure and glimpse some of its stylish beauty from the ruined chapel at the back – the rest is only possible to reconstruct from scant archival evidence. Looking at the German counterparts, who shapeshifted through the Reformation, transforming into Protestant female communities who still look after the rich tapestry of medieval life, offers the chance to rectify this in part – and encounter the Life of Nuns at their fullest, mystical, worldly, polyphonous and very much relevant still today.

The Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2025

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07/06/2024

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Call for Actors, Directors, Costume Makers, and Musicians!

Would you like to take part in a medieval dramatic experiment? Directors, actors, costume makers and musicians wanted!

The next cycle is going to take place on 26 April 2025 at St Edmund Hall

These plays were a very popular form of drama in the Middle Ages – with different groups performing short plays telling stories from the Bible. To take part in the next performance, contact Antonia Anstatt and Sarah Ware, Co-Heads of Performance, or email Professor Henrike Lähnemann, Fellow at St Edmund Hall Fellow and Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics, and Professor Lesley Smith, Fellow and Tutor in Politics and Senior Tutor at Harris Manchester College, Co-Directors of the Oxford Medieval Studies Programme at TORCH, under the address medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk.

More information and an overview of what was performed in 2019, 2022, and 2023 at https://www.seh.ox.ac.uk/mystery-cycle

CAT – Conversations Across Time

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02/06/2024

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CAT is back! After a successful run in June 2023, artist in residence at the Physics Department Pam Davis has developed a second art-piece ‘Conversations Across Time’. Free tickets for the performances moving from the Ashmolean to a second secret hidden location are available via the website https://www.citizensai.com/

Dates: June 15th (preview at 11am – 1:20pm) | June 15th | June 16th

Schedule: 15:20 Meet on the steps at the Ashmolean Museum
15:30 Prequel
16:00 Departure for Scene Two
16:15 Scene II is in a Quantum Anomaly [hidden location]
17:40 End | Conversation to Follow

Players:  Giovanni De Felice, Sirui Ning and, Juliette Imbert, PDK, Costi Levy,
Directors: PDK and Costi Levy 
Composer: Cheryl Frances-Hoad 

From the announcement in 2023: What do horses, medievalists, black hole orbits, boardrooms, and quantum computers have in common? Inspired by the Medieval Mystery Plays, artist in residence at the Physics Department Pam Davis has developed an art-piece ‘Conversations Across Time’ which links medieval theatre, women in science, and Quantum future.

Poster for the play

The Authorship of the Meditationes Vitae Christi

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28/05/2024

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Wednesday, 29 May 2024, 5.15-6.45 UK time
Memorial Room: The Queen’s College, Oxford

Dr Peter Tóth (Cornelia Stark Curator of Greek Collections at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford) will speak on “In Quest of a Medieval Best-Seller: The Authorship of the Meditationes Vitae Christi” as term lecture for the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures

The Meditationes Vitae Christi, an anonymous medieval retelling of the life of Christ, appended with a number of extra and emotional details, has been described as the single most influential Franciscan text of the Middle Ages. A real best-seller that has come down to us in hundreds of manuscripts and versions in Latin and almost all the vernaculars of Medieval Europe. The text is known to have exercised an immense influence on Western spirituality and devotion and had decisive impact on Renaissance art and played pivotal role in the evolution of medieval Passion Plays and European theatre in general. Despite this enormous significance, the origin, date and authorship of the work has remained obscure and been in the focus of heated scholarly debates. After a brief survey of the problems of the text and the current scholarly consensus about its origins, the present paper will make an attempt to identify the author of the text and reconstruct its adventurous early history to explain its subsequent anonymity.

Bibliography in the New light on the date and authorship of the Meditationes vitae Christi (2015) by Peter Tóth & al. (Brepols 2015, Open Access version in the Oxford Research Archive)

Image: Meditationes vitae Christi. English translation by Nicholas Love. Bodleian Library MS. Hatton 31, fol. 28v, mid-15th century. On medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Pseudo-Seneca: Octavia (transl. 1561)

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22/04/2024

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Where: Wolfson College Buttery
When: Friday, April 26 2024 at 1.15.

David Wiles (Emeritus Professor of Drama, University of Exeter) is performing the pseudo-Senecan Roman history play Octavia in the exuberant rhetorical language of the 1561 translation by Thomas Nuce with a group of players from Iffley and the University of Oxford.

  • Octavia, daughter of Claudius, wife of Nero – Imogen Lewis
  • Agrippina, wife and killer of Claudius, now dead – Laurence Nagy
  • Nero, son of Agrippina, now Emperor, killed his mother – Abigail Pole
  • Poppaea, mistress of Nero – Priya Toberman
  • Octavia’s nurse – Laura Laubeova
  • Seneca – Alex Marshall
  • Prefect – Andrew Stilborn
  • Messenger– Ivana Kuric
  • Chorus of Roman citizens – members of the company
  • Violin – Jessica Qiao
  • Director – David Wiles

Production sponsored by the Ancient World Research Cluster, Wolfson College Oxford.

Performance filmed by Henrike Lähnemann at Iffley Church Hall on April 21st.

The tragedy of Octavia is a unique example of the Roman history play, and survives because it was bound up with the tragedies of Seneca. The chorus, unlike those of Seneca, is engaged in the action as it rises up in rebellion against Nero. We are performing the play in the student translation of c.1561. Elizabeth had recently come to the throne, and in a polarised world the performance of religious plays seemed increasingly problematic. It was logical to turn to the classics, but the question arose, how to render Seneca in an equivalent English. It was not a matter of searching out what the words meant, but rather of forging a language with an equivalent rhetorical force, which in the Erasmus age meant a more copious language. The translator, Thomas Nuce, had an ear for performance, and did not attempt to find any pedantic metrical equivalence for the Latin. We have stripped the text down to a half-hour version, and have relished playing with the rhythms, rhymes and alliteration. Parsing the Latinate grammar was often a challenge.    

The story was scarcely a safe choice in 1561. It tells how Nero cast off his first wife, Octavia, whom he had married for domestic reasons, and contracted a love match. Henry VIII had likewise terminated a dynastic marriage, to the great displeasure of his people, and the fruit of that love match had just come to the throne.     

We are a mixed cast of students and community players, and on four occasions have worked on mediaeval plays for the festival at St Edmund Hall. The present production was put together for the annual conference of the Classical Association in Warwick on 24 March. If you are interested in participating in a production at St Edmund Hall in 2025, please contact David Wiles d.wiles@exeter.ac.uk.

Medievalists Coffee Mornings!

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17/02/2024

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When: Fridays, 10.30-11.30 am

Where: Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library
How to get there: via the Readers Entrance on Parks Road, 2nd floor via the staircase/elevator just straight ahead from the readers entrance (stick to the concrete part, do not use the ornamental staircase or you will land in the Conservation Department which is also nice but where no coffee is allowed).

NB: There is a new Weston Library Coffee Morning email list. Just send a message to coffee-mornings-weston-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk . The subject and content of the message does not matter. You’ll be subscribed and will get messages, about once a week, of who is speaking and the calendar of coffee mornings.

All medievalists working in Oxford are welcome! Join us for coffee, conversations, and many insights into the Bodleian collections, cf. the playlist ‘Weston Library Coffee Mornings’: