poetry – Oxford Medieval Studies

The long wait is over! We are extremely excited to finally present a complete video recording of the Old Norse eddic poem Vǫluspá (The Seeress’s Prophecy) by Clare Mulley:

This was the premiere performance of Vǫluspá by Clare Mulley, which took place at The Oxford Story Museum, in honour of the third Old Norse Poetry and Performance Conference (Oxford, June 2023). This was later followed by a repeat performance at The Aarhus Old Norse Mythology Conference (November 2023), and both performances have since aided and inspired other exciting projects by scholars and artists alike. This is just the beginning of a larger exciting project, so keep your eyes peeled for more!

Professor Terry Gunnell of the University of Iceland wrote of this performance, “Clare Mulley’s Vǫluspá is a multi-dimensional work of art that steps off the page to touch the lives of its twenty-first century audiences. Based around a new, creative, free translation of the original Old Nordic work, and effectively given additional depth by the atmospheric musical of Kjell Bråten, Mulley’s powerful presentation returns the poem to its original conception as a piece of essentially oral poetry, something designed to perform in both space and time. Like the original, which it builds on while retaining creative freedom, the translation is couched in striking musical, alliterative language and rhythm, evoking stark images of the original creation and eventual destruction of the world. Firmly touching the ancestral past of the ancient work, this is a presentation that simultaneously effectively draws on the present. It is something that needs to be experienced.”

The performance features soundscapes, backing vocals, accompaniment and sound recordings by musician Kjell Braaten.

It was filmed by Natascha Domeisen and edited by Ashley Castelino, with the support of Oxford Medieval Studies (OMS) and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).

Read more about Clare’s experience interpreting, translating and performing the poem here: https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/2024/01/15/voluspa-a-performative-journey/.

Poetry needs space. As music relies on its opposing silence; to be recognisable at first sight, poetry needs blanks. Transmitting texts in the Middle Ages was also a matter of space but rather concerned with the cost of writing material and the lack thereof. As a result, single poems were squeezed into the page at the expense of those defining blanks. Inevitably, large collections and vast anthologies densely occupied handwritten folia.

Nowadays, established traditions and criteria rule the process of compiling poetry books. But what was the awareness that ruled these processes in the Middle Ages? This is the topic of the workshop. The broad question is what idea of poetry and poetry books can be gleaned from this process. Is gathering just a necessity, or does it conceal a conscious poetic message? If conscious, what role does the physicality of the manuscript play for the poetic unit?

Medieval poetry books can be either multi-authorial anthologies or single-authorial collections, and many are the ways in which those poetic books could have been formed. Poems of different authors could have been selected around a common theme, or with a chronological criterion; authorial collections could be made by authors themselves, their students, or other members of their circle. These books could contain a macrostructure and, therefore, an overarching narrative; they could reflect a specific time of the author’s activity or summarise a life-long production. The way poems were arranged in ‘big containers’ and transmitted directly affected their readership, reception and their current literary status.

From the perspective of literary theory, the arrangement in medieval manuscripts opens an array of crucial questions: the relationship between the single poem and the poetry book, the way – supposedly different – in which long and shorter compositions were treated and the correspondence between its parts. Furthermore, how much was the idea of a single-thematic unit present in the minds of the compilers? Was this book to be read cover to cover, or something to read out or perform with music? And how does the layout of poetry, including the absence of those defining blanks, impact the reader’s experience?

Within this framework, the workshop focuses on the circulation of poems in the medieval Mediterranean, which is used as a case study to explore medieval literature.

The event is part of the activities of the TORCH Network Poetry in the Medieval World.

Date: 31^st May 2024

Venue: Exeter College, FitzHugh Auditorium, Walton St, Oxford OX1 2HG and online.

Registration is required for online participation. For details and the registration link, see https://torch.ox.ac.uk/event/binding-the-world-withholding-life.-poetry-books-in-the-medieval-mediterranean

Convenors: Ugo Mondini (University of Oxford) and Alberto Ravani (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Speakers: Marisa Galvez (Stanford University), Niels Gaul (The University of Edinburgh), Marlé Hammond (SOAS University of London), Adriano Russo (École française de Rome)

Programme

Friday, 31^st May 2024

9:45 a.m.		Registration

10:15 a.m.		Welcoming address Barney Taylor (Sub-rector, Exeter College) Marc D. Lauxtermann (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages)

		Introduction Ugo Mondini (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages) Alberto Ravani (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

10:30 a.m.		First Session Chair: Marina Bazzani (Faculty of Classics)
		Marisa Galvez (Stanford University) – From Chansonniers to Whole-World Poetics: The Poetry Book as a Mode of Worlding

11:15 a.m.		Coffee break

11:30 a.m.		Adriano Russo (École française de Rome) – Between Chaos and Order: Dynamics of Formation of Medieval Latin Verse Collections

12:15 p.m.		Lunch

2:30 p.m.		Second Session Chair: TBD
		Niels Gaul (University of Edinburgh) – Byzantine ‘Poetry Books’: From Embers and Sparks of Classicising Learning to Tokens of Literati Self-Fashioning?

3:15 p.m.		Coffee Break

3:30 p.m.		Marlé Hammonds (SOAS) – Mapping Verses: Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī’s Poetic Geographies

4:15 p.m.		Concluding remarks and discussion followed by drinks

		Dinner for the speakers

Tag: poetry

Vǫluspá: An Original Poetic Translation and Performance by Clare Mulley

Binding the world, withholding life: Poetry Books in the Medieval Mediterranean