Tag: trinity 24

The TORCH Network Poetry in the Medieval World after Two Terms of Activity

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11/07/2024

09:46

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Ugo Mondini is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and the Principal Investigator of the TORCH Network. He works on medieval Greek poetry and language education in the eleventh-century Byzantine Empire.

As we approach our first summer break, it is time to reflect on the initial activities of the TORCH Network Poetry in the Medieval World. The OMS Blog has generously offered us space to share our journey so far, which has taken us through the forms, languages, communities, and geographies of medieval poetry and the challenges its comparative study poses.

Rowing Towards a Theory of Medieval Poetry

Our fortnightly reading group has been the cornerstone of our activities, offering a place and time to explore medieval poetry from various regions and languages and hear each other’s views. We convened in the Humanities building every even week during term time, and we discussed medieval poetry with tea, coffee, and biscuits.

In Hilary 2024, with Ugo Mondini, Marina Bazzani, and Theo Van Lint, we addressed the complexities of Greek and Armenian poetry. In Trinity 2024, Jennifer Guest guided us through the different forms of medieval Japanese poetry. Poems, presented through handouts in their original languages and writings alongside a Romanisation/phonetic transcription and a translation, were read aloud in the original language, translated, explained in depth and in context, and discussed. This has allowed participants to appreciate the complexities, nuances, and beauty of each poem, and of each poetry.

We are delighted to see how dynamic our sessions can be and how they evolve based on participants’ interests and interactions, driven by a shared curiosity and passion for medieval literature as well as by the pursuit of a choral, informed theory of medieval poetry. For instance, we discussed if and how to compare the way in which vernacular and learned poetry emerged and functioned in Greek and Japanese. We also observed the evolution of Armenian poetry, focusing on eleventh-century works. In our discussions, we reflected on the different ways pre-modern audiences may have appreciated poetry as well as on the challenges of translating poetry into modern languages.

Each session attracted a diverse audience, including students, early-career researchers, senior scholars, and administrative staff. We also had the pleasure of welcoming non-Oxonian participants, who happened to be in Oxford and are usually based in Edinburgh, Milan, and London/Tokyo. The average attendance was 4–8 people per session.

The International Workshop

We hosted our first international workshop, Binding the World, Withholding Life: Poetry Books in the Medieval Mediterranean, generously sponsored by the British Comparative Literature Association, the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, and TORCH. The event took place at Exeter College (FitzHugh Auditorium), Oxford. We thank once again the College and its staff for their hospitality and service.

This workshop examined medieval poetry books from various origins, exploring their features, functions, and impact on the transmission and appreciation of medieval poetry across different ages and cultures. We explored how poems were stored, organised, and displayed, addressing the broader question of what ideas of medieval poetry and poetry books can be gleaned from these sources.

We took a comparative approach, with speakers focusing on different literary traditions around the Medieval Mediterranean. After the greetings of Sub-Rector Barnaby Taylor and Marc Lauxtermann, the two organisers, Ugo Mondini and Alberto Ravani, shared some opening remarks. Marisa Galvez (Stanford University) discussed books with poems in Romance languages, Niels Gaul (The University of Edinburgh) focused on Greek, Marlé Hammond (SOAS) covered Arabic, and Adriano Russo (École française de Rome) addressed Latin. The discussions were rich and varied, offering deep insights into the transmission and preservation of medieval poetry.

Exploring Manuscripts
Nicholas Kontovas led an excellent seminar at the Weston Library, where we could admire magnificent manuscripts of the Romance of Alexander. This seminar delved into the transmission eastwards of the legend of Alexander the Great – both in poetry and prose – through illuminated manuscripts from the Bodleian Libraries. The tickets sold out so quickly that we did not even have time to advertise the event. This stimulated us to organise similar activities in the near future. We thank again Nicholas and the Bodleian Libraries for this opportunity.

The Future of Research
Where is the research on medieval poetry going? And how is this direction related to other fields of study? The Doctoral Seminar Projecting Poetry has been an exciting initiative designed to provide a platform for doctoral students working on medieval poetry to present their ongoing research to a diverse audience of fellow students and senior scholars. So far, we have hosted five seminars covering poetic traditions from Greek, Arabic, Middle and Late Medieval English, and Italian; another one is scheduled for September 2024. We continue to welcome submissions from Oxonian, national, and international doctoral students, encouraging explorations of potential intersections between academic disciplines.

Ideas on and of Poetry
In HT W9, with Elizabeth Hebbard (Indiana University Bloomington)’s thought-provoking paper on the study of Troubadour melodies, we launched the new series Talks on Medieval Poetry. Through these lectures, we invite international scholars to present theories of poetry and insights from their research, which may have broader implications for the understanding of medieval poetry and literature.

Looking Ahead

After the summer break, there is much more to come. In Michaelmas 2024, our reading group will resume, bringing together Oxonian enthusiasts of medieval poetry to explore new texts and traditions. Our Talks on Medieval Poetry will feature lectures by international scholars – three are already scheduled between December 2024 and April 2025, but no spoilers for now! We anticipate receiving fascinating proposals for the Doctoral Seminars Projecting Poetry. But we are also developing brand new activities in person, online, and in hybrid format, fostering collaborations with other networks and research centres at Oxford and around the globe.

So, stay connected with us through our website, newsletter (blank email to poetrymedievalworld-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk), and social media (X/Twitter: @PoetryMedieval) for updates. If you want to learn more about the network, contact us via email. And if you want to contribute, you are more than welcome: We are open to new ideas and feasible proposals.

For now, enjoy the summer! We look forward to seeing you all in the new academic year.

Picture credit: The blind Homer http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/15480

Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group Conference 2024: Exchanging Words

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17/06/2024

10:02

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The Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group Conference 2024 will be held on 18th June 2024 with the theme of “Exchanging Words” in Room 2 of the Taylor Institution Library both in person (presenters/attendees) and online (attendees).

Tuesday 18 June 2024, 9am – 5pm
Online and In-person, Room 2, Taylor Institution Library, Saint Giles’, Oxford OX1 3NA
Free but registration required
Register here for in-person attendance – Sold out
Register here to join the conference online
Online registration closes 15 minutes before the start of the event. You will be sent the joining link within 48 hours of the event, on the day and once again 10 minutes before the event starts.

The aim of this conference is to explore the concept of exchange, whether it be textual or material, to, for and between women in the global Middle Ages. As a research group based upon the concept of exchanging ideas, we wish to explore medieval women’s own networks of exchange and transmission, and the influence of this upon both the literature and culture of the period as well as the present day.

We are delighted to present the programme for the day:

9:00-9:30 Registration 
9:30-9:45 Welcome and Opening Remarks 
9:45-11:15 Session 1 “Scholarly Networks” 
Katrin Janz-Wenig (SUB Hamburg) & Lenka Panušková (The Czech Academy of Sciences) | Communication Strategies Through Change: Translations, Compilations and Ekphrasis 
Ved Prabha Sharma (Independent Researcher) | Women Scholars and Knowledge Exchange in Medieval Indian shāstrārth Tradition 
Tatiana Barkovskiy (University of Cambridge) | A Beguinian Learning Network, or How to Approach ‘Medieval Women Mystics’ as Philosophers  
11:15-11:45 Break with Refreshments 
11:45-13:15 Session 2 “Relationships With and Between Women” 
Costas Gavriel (University of Oxford) | Gaining the Queen’s Confidence: The Relationship Between Leonor López de Córdoba and Catherine of Lancaster, Queen of Castile 
Lucia Akard (University of Oxford) | Talking About Rape and Exchanging Knowledge in Medieval Dijon 
Meg Greenough (Independent Researcher) | The Wilton Matrix: Mothering in Goscelin of Saint Betin’s Liber Confortatorius
13:15-14:30 Lunch Break 
Exploring the Taylorian’s Treasures, with Professor Henrike Lähnemann (University of Oxford) 
14:30-15:45 Keynote Address 
Professor Diane Watt (University of Surrey) | Medieval Women Writers: Troubling a Feminist History of British Women’s Writing
15:45-16:15 Break with Refreshments 
16:15-17:45 Session 3 “Nuns’ Words” 
Francesca Maria Villani (University of Bari) | Eloise’s Psalmody: Body and Voice Through the Epistles
Jane Bliss (Independent Researcher) | The Nun Changes her Library Book 
Hilary Pearson (Independent Researcher) | Teresa de Cartagena’s Models of Female Authority 
17:45 Closing Remarks 
18:00 End of Conference

Please direct any questions to any of the conference organizers: 
Katherine Smith (katherine.smith@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk) 
Marlene Schilling (marlene.schilling@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk) 
Carolin Gluchowski (carolin.gluchowski@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk) 
Santhia Velasco Kittlaus (santhia.velascokittlaus@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk)

The research group and the conference are generously funded by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and their “Critical-Thinking Communities” Initiative.

Medieval Matters: Week 8

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10/06/2024

14:40

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It feels like only yesterday that I was welcoming you all to Oxford for the academic year, and yet here we are at the very end of Trinity Term. It has been such a fantastic and busy year, and it’s hard to believe that it’s almost over. Here is some wisdom on endings, specially for the occasion, taken from the  Epistolae  project:

vespere autem hora diei ultima terminatur.
[The final hour of the day is concluded in the evening.]
A letter (1156-57) from Osbert of Clare to Adelidis of Barking

I take this to mean that though the end of teaching term is in sight, there are still some hours of ‘evening’ left! You will find below a whole range of delights for this last week of full term.

This of course means that today’s email is the last proper Medieval Matters Newsletter of the academic year. In honour of this occasion, today’s guest blog is not written by a guest at all, but by me. This has been my third year as the OMS Comms Officer, and I was asked to reflect on some of the work that I do in this role and my twinned role as the Academic Mentor for the Interdisciplinary MSt in Medieval Studies. I of course answer pressing questions such as “when do you choose the manuscript images” and “what do Medievalists do in August?”, but in many ways this is less a report on the work that I do and more a celebration of some of the fantastic things Oxford’s medievalists have been up to this year. You can read the post here.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • The Medieval Mystery Cycle is coming back! Mark your diaries for 26 April 2025! There will be small grants available for student groups putting on plays.
  • Double thanks are due to St Edmund Hall: the College has agreed to host both the plays (including catering!) AND this blog. This means that – after a time when we had to ration images due to server space problems – we can now illustrate posts to our hearts content. Please do consider writing a blog post for us – on your research, an upcoming event or a new publication. Write to Luisa or Henrike to be set up as an author on the blog.
  • Living Stones has two events coming up very soon: On Saturday 29 June artists Sally Levell and Phil Whiting are leading a day-school in drawing at Iffley Church. This is a very popular annual event and spaces are limited. See https://livingstonesiffley.org.uk/events for details and tickets. Tickets are only available online, and the closing date for bookings is 17 June. On Saturday 13 July the second of our three ’12th-Century’ days includes a participatory workshop on manuscript illumination along with a talk about how the builders of Iffley Church saw themselves as inheritors of Rome. Tickets can be booked online and at the door. An appetite-whetter can be found on https://livingstonesiffley.org.uk/past-events/f/oxford-in-1160-scholars-and-pilgrims-at-st-frideswide%E2%80%99s-priory where you can listen to the thrilling talks given by Andrew Dunning and Anne Bailey on Oxford in 1160: Scholars and Pilgrims at St Frideswide’s Priory.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 10th June:

  • The Tolkien 50th Anniversary Seminar Series meets at 5pm in the Summer Common Room, Magdalen College. This week’s speaker will be John Holmes (University of Birmingham), Riddles in the Grass: the characterisation and narrative value of landscape over the fields of Rohan. For more information, please see https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Old Library, All Souls College and on Teams. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, you can use this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker will be Katherine Jansen (Catholic University of America) ‘The Relics of Rome’.

Tuesday 11th June:

  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speakers will be A Book Launch:  New Zealand Medievalism:  reframing the medieval, edited by Anna Czarnowus and Janet Wilson (Routledge). Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.

Wednesday 12th June:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets at 11.15am in Oriel College King Edward Street 7 (Annette Volfing’s office; press the intercom buzzer to be let in). This week will be a project presentation by Mary Boyle.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.

Thursday 13th June:

  • The All Souls Seminar in Medieval and Early Modern Science meets at 2-3.30pm in the Hovenden Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Zoe Screti (Harris Manchester College, Oxford), Alchemy during the English Reformation: The Troubled Times of Thomas Charnock.
  • The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm online. Please contact Howard Jones Howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk to request the handouts and to be added to the list. This week will be on the Old Saxon Hêliand (Bradley leading).
  • The Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research Annual lecture will take place at 5pm at  Danson Room, Trinity College. This year’s speaker will be Peter Sarris (University of Cambridge) – ‘Justinian: Between East and West’.
  • At 9.30pm, the St Edmund Consort sings Latin Compline at candlelight in the Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East (the library church of St Edmund Hall, Queen’s Lane). No registration is needed but please be advised that the space is only accessible via uneven steps and dimly lit, and only a limited number of people can be accommodated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Friday 14th June:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • CAT – Conversations Across Time. Preview 11am, Premiere 3:20pm, second performance Saturday 16 June 3:20pm. After a successful run in June 2023, artist in residence at the Physics Department Pam Davis has developed a second art-piece which links medieval theatre, women in science, and Quantum future. Free tickets for the performances moving from the Ashmolean to a second secret hidden location are available via the website https://www.citizensai.com/
  • Waddesdon Internship Scheme: In 2023 Waddesdon launched Waddesdon Pathways, a brand-new, year-long internship programme. They are now looking for our second cohort to start in September 2024. Please find out more information about this, including how to apply here. 

There will be a brief final email next week with some events and opportunities to look forward to over the summer, and some guidance on how to stay in contact if you are leaving. Please do send me anything you would like disseminated! But for now, I give you some fitting words from the Epistolae project, for those who hate goodbyes and endings as much as I do:

quin immo vere dilectionis ligatura reliquum nodetur in aevum
[May the bond of our true affection be knit ever more closely for all time.] 
A letter (c. 732) from Lioba, abbess of Tauberbischofsheim

In other words: stay in touch! Whether you are leaving Oxford for the summer or for the long-term, the community is always here to welcome you back with open arms.

It is an honour and a priveledge to have been your herald for yet another year, and to guide you through the busy schedule of the Oxford academic term. Thank you so much for everything you have done this year: to everyone who has organised an event or seminar; given a paper; attended any number of reading groups or events; brought opportunities and CFPs to my attention; or turned up at the coffee mornings. Oxford’s medieval community is unbelievably special, and it is always such a joy to be a part of it. Long may it prosper!

[The busy, bustling, flourishing world of Medieval Studies at Oxford!]
St John’s College MS. 61, f. 59 v. 
By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
 

Medieval Matters: Week 7

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03/06/2024

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I don’t quite understand how it’s come around so quickly, but here we are in Week 7. For those who need a bit of a boost at this late stage in the term, some wisdom on the joys of (medieval) texts, taken from the  Epistolae  project:

In nullis nobis desit doctrina legendi,
Lectio sit nobis et liber omne quod est.
[Let us not miss reading’s lesson in any [languages];
Let everything there is be a book and a text for us.]
A poem from Baudri to Constance of Le Ronceray

As Oxford medievalists we are of course extremely lucky to be surrounded by so many opportunities to read and encounter literatures in various medieval languages. But we are also a highly interdisciplinary community, and this week we have a whole host of delights, including Eclipse prediction, Byzantine dining, 19th century manuscript scrapbooks, and an exhibition on medieval monsters!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • The Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group Conference 2024 will be held on 18th June 2024 with the theme of “Exchanging Words” in Room 2 of the Taylor Institution Library both in person (presenters/attendees) and online (attendees). Free but registration required. All info, including the link to registration, can be found here: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/medieval-womens-writing-research-group-conference-2024-exchanging-words
  • A workshop on Reconsidering Contrafacts: Practices of Contrafacture in Monophonic Song (1150–1550) will take place on 20th June, 10am-7pm. Looking at different repertories of monophonic song between 1150 and 1550, the aim of this workshop is to explore different approaches to the widespread spectrum of practices and concepts of contrafacture: composing new texts for pre-existing melodies. If you want to attend or if you have questions, please email Philip Wetzler. To read more and see the schedule, please click here.
  • Oxford Translation Day 2024: Saturday, June 15, 2024, St Anne’s College. Every June, St Anne’s College runs Oxford Translation Day, a celebration of literary translation consisting of a vibrant range of workshops and talks. The day culminates in the award of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. The Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize is for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language. It aims to honour the craft of translation, and to recognise its cultural importance. It was founded by Lord Weidenfeld and is funded by New College, The Queen’s College, and St Anne’s College. The full programme is available on the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) Research Centre website, here: https://occt.web.ox.ac.uk/oxford-translation-day-2024. All Oxford Translation Day events are free, but require registration. Please register via the Eventbrite links provided on the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) Research Centre website. https://occt.web.ox.ac.uk/oxford-translation-day-2024

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 3rd June:

  • The Tolkien 50th Anniversary Seminar Series meets at 5pm in the T. S. Eliot Theatre, Merton College. This week’s speaker will be Michael G.R. Tolkien (Poet and Critic), “A grandson’s reflections on J.R.R. Tolkien. For more information, please see https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Old Library, All Souls College and on Teams. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, you can use this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker will be Peregrine Horden (All Souls, Oxford) ‘A room with a view: Chichele’s college’.

Tuesday 4th June:

  • The Mythical and Monstrous exhibition takes place from 12 noon–4pm, Lecture Room 6, New College, Oxford. Hunt for weird and wonderful beasts in items from our fabulous special collections, from dragons and unicorns, to centaurs, blemmyes, and merpeople. Among the wide variety of items on display will be a beautiful thirteenth-century Psalter, a fantastic fourteenth-century apocalypse manuscript, a famous fifteenth-century chronicle, and a spectacular sixteenth-century astronomical text. The exhibition is free and open to all. Signs will be in place to direct visitors to the exhibition from the Porters’ Lodge, located halfway down Holywell Street. If you have any questions, please email library@new.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval French Seminar meets at 5pm at the Maison Francaise. Drinks will be served from 5pm; the presentations will start at 5:15pm. All are welcome! This week’s speaker will be Jonathan Morton (Tulane University), ‘Integuments, Astral Magic, and Robots: Virgil and Medieval Technologies of Literature‘.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speakers will be Charlie West (Regent’s), Cruising Hell:  seeing and writing Dante’s sodomites and Fergus Bovill (Merton), Cut and Paste: the album of illuminated manuscript cuttings in the 19thc. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.

Wednesday 5th June:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets at 11.15am in Oriel College King Edward Street 7 (Annette Volfing’s office; press the intercom buzzer to be let in). The topic for this term is Konrad von Würzburg: ‘Der Schwanritter’; this week we will discuss ‘human-animal interaction’Kampf & Körper’ with Julia Lorenz presenting. Open access edition here. If you are interested to be added to the teams group for updates, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.

Thursday 6th June:

  • The All Souls Seminar in Medieval and Early Modern Science meets at 2-3.30pm in the Hovenden Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Laure Miolo (Lincoln College, University of Oxford), Eclipse Prediction in Late Fifteenth-century England: the Case of Lewis Caerleon.
  • The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5pm at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, Arumugam Building. All welcome! This week’s speaker will be Lara Frentrop, University of Heidelberg, ‘Objects of Desire: The Byzantine Art of Dining as Social and Romantic Agents‘.

Friday 7th June:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
  • The Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group (OMMG) meets at 5pm in the Sir Howard Stringer Room, Merton College. Antonia Della Fratte, University of Padua will speak on Gustav F. Waagen Tours of Britain: Describing Illuminated MSS in Oxford.
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group will meets at 5-6.30pm. Please note that this final session of the will be Zoom ONLY, as our convenor is unable to attend for our final meeting of the academic year. We shall continue reading from Mandeville, and will also discuss plans for next term. If you wish to join us and are not already on our mailing-list, please contact Stephanie Hathaway or Jane Bliss to be sent the link.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Free books for medievalists! Professor Richard Sharpe (1954–2020) was Professor of Diplomatic in the University and one of the country’s foremost medievalists, whose research ranged from the early Irish church to Anglo-Norman royal acts to the transmission of medieval Latin texts and medieval books and libraries. He was also a large presence in the History Faculty and much involved in graduate tuition. Books from Professor Sharpe’s library are now being offered gratis to local medievalists – please see the list here. A great encourager of others, he would have been delighted to know that his books could be helping the next generation. For more information, please contact Elizabeth Champion to reserve books and arrange collection.
  • CFP: Unlocking the Exeter Book – New Perspectives: Paper proposals are invited for a conference to be held at The University of Oxford, on 16–17 April 2025. The Exeter Book or Exeter Anthology is a cornerstone of Old English poetry. From saints’ lives to wisdom poetry, lyrics and laments to riddles and prayers, this fascinating juxtaposition of genres, styles and themes invites constant re-reading and re-evaluation. The conference will bring together established scholars and new voices to bring fresh insights to this rich and enigmatic manuscript. Please send abstracts of no more than 150 words to Rachel Burns and Francis Leneghan by 1st August 2024

Finally, some more wisdom from the Epistolae Project, and from Baudri, on the joys of reading:

quaevis mundi littera nos doceat
[Every literature of the world teaches us.] 
A poem from Baudri to Constance of Le Ronceray

I of course take this broadly, in the spirit of this week’s first wisdom quotation, to mean that every facet of medieval studies teaches us! I wish you a week of productive reading, teaching and learning.

[A Medievalist who “missed reading’s lesson“ in Latin is now a little puzzled…]
St John’s College MS. 61, f. 10 r. 
By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
 

‘Mythical and Monstrous’ Exhibition at New College, Oxford

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28/05/2024

11:52

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Tuesday 4 June 2024, 12 noon–4PM
Lecture Room 6, New College, Oxford

We are delighted to announce New College Library’s upcoming exhibition ‘Mythical and Monstrous: Fantastical Creatures at New College Library’.

Hunt for weird and wonderful beasts in items from the College’s fabulous special collections, from dragons and unicorns, to centaurs, blemmyes, and merpeople.

Among the wide variety of items on display will be a beautiful thirteenth-century Psalter, a fantastic fourteenth-century apocalypse manuscript, a famous fifteenth-century chronicle, and a spectacular sixteenth-century astronomical text.

Discover how depictions and understandings of mythical monsters changed over time and explore what these creatures reveal about how people saw themselves and the societies in which they lived.

New College Library, Oxford MS 284, f. 21r
New College Library, Oxford MS 65, f. 30 r

The exhibition is free and open to all. Signs will be in place to direct visitors to the exhibition from the Porters’ Lodge, located halfway down Holywell Street.

If you have any questions, please email library@new.ox.ac.uk.

Medieval Matters: Week 6

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27/05/2024

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As we near the end of the teaching year I am driven to reflect on all of the fantastic things we’ve seen at OMS during the course of the year. I’m always struck by the phenomenal range of our medievalist activities: particularly by the huge number of languages represented! Some wisdom this week, then, on a common medievalist problem: that of translation between languages – taken, as always, from  the  Epistolae  project: :

Scito, filia, quod sententia cujuslibet dicti, si de lingua in linguam translata fuerit, vix in peregrino idiomate, sua ei sapiditas vel compositio remanebit.
[Know, daughter, that the meaning of any saying, if it is translated from one tongue to another, will barely retain its savour or composition in a foreign language.]
A letter from A letter from Adam, abbot of Perseigne to Blanche of Navarre

Luckily for us all, there are ample opportunities to learn new medieval languages or to cement our understanding of existing ones at any number of reading groups! This week we have, for example, opportunities to hear about medieval English, Hebrew, Latin, German, Old Norwegian, and Japanese – and I’m sure, with apologies, that there are further languages that have escaped my immediate notice! Please see below for the weekly roundup, and to take full advantage of this embarrassment of linguistic riches.

As blog posts this week, we have the report and recordings of the workshop on the Reception of the Nibelungenlied and Homer workshop; do go and see the exhibition linked to it in the Voltaire Room of the Taylorian Epic! Homer and the Nibelungenlied in Translation which is only on until Wednesday (continued then for another two weeks on a reduced scale)!

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 27th May:

  • The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading Group meets at 3pm in Univ. This informal reading group will explore queer and trans themes in medieval texts. In Trinity, we’ll be thinking about queerness and transness on trial in the Middle Ages. This week’s theme will be The trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (Speyer, 1477). All extremely welcome, both in-person and online! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email Rowan Wilson (rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk).
  • The Tolkien 50th Anniversary Seminar Series meets at 5pm in the Summer Common Room, Magdalen College. This week’s speaker will be David Bernabé (University of Oxford/University of the Basque Country), Riddles in the Grass: the characterisation and narrative value of landscape over the fields of Rohan. For more information, please see https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Old Library, All Souls College and on Teams. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, you can use this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker will be Laure Miolo (Lincoln, Oxford) ‘Establishing a school of astronomy and astrology in the fourteenth century? The case of the universities of Paris and Oxford’.

Tuesday 28th May:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 12.15pm in Lecture Room 2, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Alex Paddock, Keble College, Oxford, Patience, the Middle English Physiologus, and the deep sea of experience. Seminars followed by a sandwich lunch. All welcome!
  • The Medieval Poetry Reading Group meets at 4pm in the Colin Matthew Room, Radcliffe Humanities Building. This week’s theme will be Japanese Poetry This is an activity of the TORCH Network Poetry in the Medieval World. For more information, you can refer to our website https://torch.ox.ac.uk/poetry-in-the-medieval-world; you can also contact Ugo Mondini.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speakers will be Marion Ryley (Wadham), Envisioning Division: marginal medallions in medieval Judaic and Islamic manuscripts and Maya Smith (St Cross), Using Pigment Analysis of Pre-Conquest Manuscripts to Illuminate Trade and Commerce. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.
  • The Oxford Interfaith Forum meets at 6-7pm, online for The Greatest Medieval Masoretic Pentateuch: The Lailashi Codex—the Crown of Georgian Jewry. A Panel of Distinguished Scholars will present the Greatest Medieval Masoretic Pentateuch—The Lailashi Codex: The Crown of Georgian Jewry. To register, please click here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0vfuyppjMpH9UZ-8i1kakoZh0UoGSVPsTl#/registration.

Wednesday 29th May:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets at 11.15am in Oriel College King Edward Street 7 (Annette Volfing’s office; press the intercom buzzer to be let in). The topic for this term is Konrad von Würzburg: ‘Der Schwanritter’; this week we will discuss human-animal interaction with Philip Flacke presenting. Open access edition here. If you are interested to be added to the teams group for updates, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
  • Dr Peter Tóth (Cornelia Stark Curator of Greek Collections at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford) will speak on as term lecture for the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures “In Quest of a Medieval Best-Seller: The Authorship of the Meditationes Vitae Christi” 5.15-6.45 Memorial Room: The Queen’s College, Oxford

Thursday 30th May:

  • The Environmental History Working Group meets at 12.30-2pm in the Merze Tate Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Ruka Hussain, “Science, Ecology and Romanticism in George Catlin’s travelling ‘Indian Gallery’”. We try to keep discussions informal, and we encourage anyone at all interested in these kinds of approaches to join our meetings, regardless of research specialism or presumed existing knowledge. For updates on meeting details, refer to the EHWG tab on the Environmental History website. For further information or to join the EHWG mailing list, please email environmentalhistoryworkinggroup-owner@maillist.ox.ac.uk
  • The All Souls Seminar in Medieval and Early Modern Science meets at 2-3.30pm in the Hovenden Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Lawrence Principe (Johns Hopkins University), Franciscan Spirituality, Transmutation, and the Antichrist: John of Rupescissa’s Alchemical Thought and Practices.
  • The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm online. Please contact Howard Jones Howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk to request the handouts and to be added to the list. This week will be on Old Norwegian (Nelson leading).
  • The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5pm at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, Arumugam Building. All welcome! This week’s speaker will be Gervase Rosser, University of Oxford, ‘Irrational, Feminine, Subversive: The Cult of Miraculous Images in Medieval England’.

Friday 31st May:

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Assistant Professor of Early Medieval History [Temporary Cover]: The University of Cambridge Faculty of History wishes to recruit a Temporary Assistant Professor in Medieval History. This is a 2 year Temporary Assistant Professorship to cover the the absence of Professor Caroline Goodson, while she is seconded to the American Academy in Rome. The role will include teaching and examining at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels across a range of early medieval European topics; expertise relating to the medieval Mediterranean may be an advantage. For full details, please click here.
  • College Lectureship in Medieval History (part-time): St. Peter’s College invites applications for a one-year, 7-hour College Lectureship in Medieval History for one year from 1 October 2024, to provide teaching during Prof Stephen Baxter’s sabbatical leave. The position will be particularly suitable for either a doctoral research student nearing the completion of their thesis, or an early career scholar, seeking experience in college teaching and administration. For full details, please click here.
  • Transcription Opportunity: Katherine Turley requires a transcription of a fairly short item in English, in Oxford, Queens College MS 357 (fols. 83v–88v). If you are interested in undertaking this work (obviously for payment) please contact Katherine directly.

Finally, learning languages is all well and good, but of course the real joy (if I may be so bold to suggest, as a literature scholar…) comes in being able to use them for reading. So here is some wisdom on the joys of reading:

Ille liber mihi gratus erat, gratissima dicta.
Ergo consumpsi saepe legendo diem.
[That book was welcome to me, the words most welcome,
So I spent the day reading them often.] 
A poem to Baudri from Constance of Le Ronceray

I hope that however you are spending this bank holiday Monday, you are able to enjoy welcome words, and to spend a day reading things that bring you delight!

[A Medievalist tries to get to grips with a new language… just because it’s a delight it doesn’t mean that it’s easy!]
St John’s College MS. 61, f. 64 v. 
By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
 

Medieval Matters: Week 5

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20/05/2024

16:22

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The end of the teaching year is fast approaching! We’ve had such a busy and exciting year that I’m sure many of us are feeling rather exhausted – especially when it’s so warm outside! But there are still four more weeks of official term, and a medievalist’s work is never truly done – if you need some inspiration, heed this advice from Aldhelm, taken from the  Epistolae project: 

carissimi, si quamlibet parum a vestra bona consuetudine aliquando vel semel sentitis declinare: gravem casum gemendo vos incurrisse iudicate.
[dearest friends, if you ever feel that you are slipping occasionally or even once, from your good habits, however little it may be, consider with groans that you have incurred a serious fall.]
A letter (1102) from Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury to Edith

I take this to mean “no slacking in fifth week”! If you’re feeling weary and in need of perking up as we approach the end of the year, our blog post this week is sure to raise your spirits. The blog post about the first of three 12th Century Study Days at Iffley gives a fantastic insight into local history and sainthood, and a wonderful sense of our Medievalist community’s work outside of the University walls! To watch recordings of the talks by Andrew Dunning and Anne E. Bailey, read about future events from Living Stones, and sign up for the Pilgrimage walk along St Frideswide’s Way (26-29 June 2024), please visit the blog post here.

It’s also easier to keep up your “good habits” when you’re surrounded by such a wonderful community of medievalists – please see below for the week’s opportunities to keep up the good work:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • On 25 May, there will be a workshop on The Reading and Reception of the Homeric Poems and the Nibelungenlied in Germany and Europe from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, at the Taylorian and the Bodleian; papers in the morning, manuscript sessions and an exhibition opening in the afternoon. The workshop is open to all with no attendance fee. The papers will also be livestreamed. Please register your interest before Thursday night by emailing John Butcher; for online attendance, a link will be sent out 24 hours in advance. A selection of the papers and the two guided tours will also later be made available as podcasts. The exhibition Epic! Homer and Nibelungenlied in Translation to coincide with the workshop will be open just for a week, so make sure to catch it between 22 and 29 May and / or download the exhibition catalogue which comes out as an open access publication as part of the ‘Cultural Memory’ series by Taylor Editions.
  • All are welcome to a new Latin palaeography group, organised by William Little and Rebecca Menmuir with the Societas Ovidiana. Our aim is to transcribe previously unedited material from a range of medieval manuscripts, beginning with a 12th-century commentary of Ovid’s Heroides 12 (Medea to Jason). This will be a friendly and informal group open to everyone interested in improving (or maintaining) their Latin and palaeography skills, encountering a range of medieval manuscripts, or learning more about classical reception. We will meet on Zoom every Wednesday, 10am EDT / 3pm BST / 4pm CEST, beginning Wednesday 29th May. Please email Rebecca Menmuir for more information and a joining link.
  • OCHJS: Concert – Blind Far Out at Sea: Eran Tzur in Conversation and Concert: 4th of June 2024, 18:00-20:00, Maison Française d’Oxford, 2 Norham Rd, Oxford. Tzur will reunite with his old friend, Elad Uzan, a member of Oxford’s Faculty of Philosophy. Together, they will explore the connection between the Hebrew language, medieval texts and musical expression, and the art of composing poetry, playing together from different periods of Tzur’s artistic catalogue. Register for Tickets here. The event is free, but space is limited, so book your tickets soon. For further information, please click here.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 20th May:

  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts. We will read a very entertaining account of the legendary foundation of Cambridge University by the Carmelite friar Nicholas Cantlow. Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites.
  • The Tolkien 50th Anniversary Seminar Series meets at 5pm in the T. S. Eliot Theatre, Merton College. This week’s speaker will be Will Sherwood (University of Glasgow), “I am a link in the chain”: Victorian Transformations of British Romanticism and their Influence on Tolkien. For more information, please see https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Old Library, All Souls College and on Teams. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, you can use this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speakers will be Charles West (Edinburgh), Helen Gittos (Balliol) and Mirela Ivanova (Sheffield), in discussion:  Inventing Slavonic Cultures of Writing Between Rome and Constantinople. Please note the change of room.

Tuesday 21st May:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 12.15pm in Lecture Room 2, English Faculty. This week’s speakers will be Alicia Smith (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge), Negotiating shame through the ‘harlot saint’ Thais and Nancy Jiang (University of Warwick) Medieval Penitential Piety and the Virtues of Debt Suretyship. Seminars followed by a sandwich lunch. All welcome!
  • Francesco Zimei (University of Trento): The Italian Lauda: Origins, Features, Connections (Digital Humanities and Sensory Heritage (DHSH) – Seminar  Series), St Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall, 4.30pm 
  • CMTC presents — “Work in Progress” Colloquium (Trinity Term 2024) 5.15–6.45pm Memorial Room, The Queen’s College: Carolin Gluchowski (New College, Oxford), ‘Revising Devotion: Exploring Church Reform through Prayerbook MS. Lat. liturg. f. 4’ and Paola Rea (Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Napoli / Universitat de València), ‘Non ti maravigliare che io non mi distenda nelo scrivere: Female Autographs and Kinship in an Early-Modern Italian Epistolary Corpus’. Abstracts on https://cmtc.queens.ox.ac.uk/seminars/
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speakers will be Alex Still (BNC), Hrothgar’s horse:  the evidence for an interconnected elite across the North Sea world and Elizabeth Williams (LMH), Heavenly Sensations:  multisensory encounters with the liturgy in medieval Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre, c. 1099-1215. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.

Wednesday 22nd May:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets at 11.15am in Oriel College King Edward Street 7 (Annette Volfing’s office; press the intercom buzzer to be let in). The topic for this term is Konrad von Würzburg: ‘Der Schwanritter’. Open access edition here. If you are interested to be added to the teams group for updates, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5.15pm at Auditorium, Corpus Christi College, and online via Teams. Teams link: https://msteams.link/FW0C. This week’s speakers will be Maximilien Durand (Musée du Louvre) and Jannic Durand (Musée du Louvre)   – ‘Creating the Louvre’s New Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art: Issues and Challenges in a Turbulent World’. Please note the change in venue and start time!
  • The Book launch of Siân E. Grønlie’s The Old Testament in Medieval Icelandic Texts. Translation, Exegesis and Storytelling takes place at 5.30-7pm in Seminar Room 9, St Anne’s College. We celebrate the launch of the book (Boydell and Brewer, 2024), with a panel discussion with Prof Heather O’Donoghue, Prof Henrike Laehnemann, and Dr Rachel Burns, followed by a drinks reception. For further details, please see here.

Thursday 23rd May:

  • The All Souls Seminar in Medieval and Early Modern Science meets at 2– 3pm in the Hovenden Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Michael Hunter (Birkbeck, University of London), Robert Boyle’s Strange Reports: From the Outlandish to the Supernatural. To be added to our mailing list please email Dan Haywood mailto:daniel.haywood@sjc.ox.ac.uk

Friday 24th May:

  • Recording Oxford’s Medieval Lives. A Mise en Perspective of Lincoln Documents takes place from 10am-7pm at Lincoln College. The conference will include academic papers and presentations by students and participants in the year-long seminar ‘Exploring medieval Oxford through Lincoln Archives’. They will be presenting their work and discoveries at the conference alongside papers by David d’Avray (UL/Jesus College), Philippa Hoskin (CCC, Cambridge), Richard Allen (Magdalene College), Michael Stansfield (New College) and Alison Ray (St Peter’s and All Souls). Anyone with an interest in the history of medieval Oxford and medieval documents more generally is welcome to attend and can register by writing to Laure Miolo and Lindsay McCormack.
  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace. This week, Thea Gomelauri will present medieval Hebrew manuscripts.
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group will meets at 5-6.30pm at the Julia Mann Room in St Hilda’s College, with the option to join remotely online. Those attending in person please be at the Lodge BY 5.00, where we will meet you and take you to the room in South Building. The texts, together with supplementary material, can be found on TT Padlet Please ensure you print the text (or bring it electronically), as we do not provide paper copies. Wine and soft drinks are available as usual!

Saturday 25th May:

Finally, for further inspiration to keep working hard through this last stretch of the teaching year, here is some further advice from Anselm:

Nullus enim potest vitare defectum, nisi qui se semper extendit ad profectum. 
[For nobody can avoid falling back except one who always strains towards progress.] 
A letter (1094/1095) from Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury to Nun M.

The sun should help to ward off any fifth week blues, and to ensure no “falling back” happens, but if you need further assistance, please do come along to the very friendly medievalists coffee morning. In the meantime, I wish you all a week of research and teaching progress!

[Medievalists diligently striving towards progress together…]
St John’s College MS. 61, f. 2 r. 
By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
 

Medieval Matters: Week 4

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13/05/2024

07:23

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The sun has finally arrived in Oxford! After such a long winter and such a cold and windy April, I think I speak for us all when I say that seeing Oxford in the sunshine is a real joy! I for one was so overjoyed to see the sun this weekend that I was reminded of this wisdom from the  Epistolae project: 

non sic tempestate iactatus portum nauta desiderat, non sic sitientia imbres arva desiderant, non sic curvo litore anxia filium mater expectat, quam ut ego visibus vestris fruere cupio 
[more than the storm-tossed sailor longs for the harbour, more than the thirsty fields desire rain, or the anxious mother watches by the shore for her son, do I long for the sight of you.] 
A letter from Egburg/Egburga/Ecburg (716-20) 

Our blog post this week is a real delight, as both a celebration of a new book publication and a fantastic insight into medieval verse. Dr Daniel Sawyer writes about his brand new book, out this month with Oxford University Press, on Reading Middle English Verse. This will be such an invaluabe teaching resource for those of us teaching medieval literature, and I for one am hugely excited! To discover how studying Middle English verse can make us rethink our modern day use of English, to read more about the many varieties of Medieval English poetry, and to find a discount code for the book, read Daniel’s blog post here.

For further sights that are sure to bring you joy, feast your eyes on all of the fantastic events taking place this week: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Invitation to end of year celebration with OMSBook launch: On Tuesday 11 June 11, 2024. 5.00 p.m. for 5.15, the last meeting of the .Medieval Church and Culture‘ seminar’ In the chapel at Harris Manchester College will be combined with a drinks reception and a book launch of New Zealand medievalism: reframing the medieval, edited by Anna Czarnowus and Janet M. Wilson, Routledge. Speakers: Anna Czarnowus (Katowice), Carolyne Larrington (Oxford), David Matthews (Manchester), and Janet Wilson (Northampton). All welcome but RSVP by Friday 7 June 7 to Janet Wilson

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 13th May:

  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts. We will read a very entertaining account of the legendary foundation of Cambridge University by the Carmelite friar Nicholas Cantlow. Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites. https://web.maillist.ox.ac.uk/ox/info/medieval-latin-ms-reading
  • The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading Group meets at 3pm in Univ. This informal reading group will explore queer and trans themes in medieval texts. In Trinity, we’ll be thinking about queerness and transness on trial in the Middle Ages. This week’s theme will be The trial of Rolandina Ronchaia (Venice, 1355). All extremely welcome, both in-person and online! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email Rowan Wilson (rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk).
  • The Tolkien 50th Anniversary Seminar Series meets at 5pm in the Summer Common Room, Magdalen College. This week’s speaker will be Dr. Eleanor Parker (Brasenose College, University of Oxford), Tolkien and the Anglo-Saxon Calendar. For more information, please see https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College and on Teams. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, you can use this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker will be Emma Hornby (Bristol): ‘Intertextuality in medieval Spain: liturgy, iconography, architecture and music at San Miguel de Escalada in the tenth century’.

Tuesday 14th May:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 12.15pm in Lecture Room 2, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Tim Glover (Emmanuel College, Cambridge), Compilatory Form and Authorship in Richard Rolle and in Late-Medieval Religious Literature. Seminars followed by a sandwich lunch. All welcome!
  • The Medieval Poetry Reading Group meets at 4pm in the Colin Matthew Room, Radcliffe Humanities Building. This week’s theme will be The Wakan Rōeishū (Japanese and Chinese-Style Chanting Collection, c. 1000): Sound and Manuscript. This is an activity of the TORCH Network Poetry in the Medieval World. For more information, you can refer to our website https://torch.ox.ac.uk/poetry-in-the-medieval-world; you can also contact Ugo Mondini at ugo.mondini@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
  • The 2024 Zernov Lecture meets at 5pm at the Maison française d’Oxford, 2-10 Norham Road, OX2 6SE. This year’s speaker will be Dr Sebastian Brock FBA, (University of Oxford), ‘The Ecumenical Journey of the Writings of St Isaac the Syrian’, introduced by David G.K. Taylor (Associate Professor in Aramaic and Syriac, Wolfson College, Oxford).
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speakers will be Elena Vermeer (Trinity), The Old English and Old Norse ‘Joshua’:  translation and readership in context and Vita Dervan (Lincoln), Rewriting Virgil through Dante:  Guido da Pisa’s Fiore d’Italia and medieval translation. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.

Wednesday 15th May:

  • There will be no meeting of the Medieval German Graduate Seminar this week.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles, Oxford, and online via Teams. Teams link: https://msteams.link/FW0C. This week’s speaker will be James Cogbill (University of Oxford) – ‘Fourteenth-Century Byzantine History-Writers and the Problem of Emperors’ Family Ties’.
  • The Oxford Interfaith Forum will meet at 6pm, online via zoom for Sounding the Silence – Contemplation as Poetic Practice; Poetry as Contemplative Practice by Dr Aaron Maniam. To register, please click here.

Thursday 16th May:

  • The Environmental History Working Group meets at 12.30-2pm in the Merze Tate Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Mim Pomerantz, “Ecological Automatism: Photography and Non-Human Creativity in Minotaure (1933-1939)”. We try to keep discussions informal, and we encourage anyone at all interested in these kinds of approaches to join our meetings, regardless of research specialism or presumed existing knowledge. For updates on meeting details, refer to the EHWG tab on the Environmental History website. For further information or to join the EHWG mailing list, please email environmentalhistoryworkinggroup-owner@maillist.ox.ac.uk
  • The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm online. Please contact Howard Jones Howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk to request the handouts and to be added to the list. This week will be on the Gothic Bible (Ryan leading).
  • The Medieval Women’s Writing Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm in Lincoln College, Lower Lecture Room. This week’s theme is Arabic and Hebrew Medieval Women’s Writers. Stay up to date with events by joining our mailing list or following us on X @MedievalWomenOx. Texts for the reading group are shared on the mailing list.
  • The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5pm at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, Arumugam Building. All welcome! This week’s speaker will be Livia Lupi, University of Warwick, Artistic Practice and the Emergence of the Architect in Italy, c. 1300 – c. 1480.

Friday 17th May:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace. 
  • The final meeting of the initiative ‘Teaching the Codex’ will take place at Merton College 2-5pm on the topic of ‘hybridity’. Places are limited but if you would like to check whether there is still space, contact Mary Boyle. 
  • The Oxford Medieval Society Chain Maille Workshop takes place at 2-5.30pm, in St John’s College New Seminar Room. Registration is MANDATORY. Don’t miss out, places are limited! Tickets: £15. Refreshments will be provided. To register, click here.
  • The Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group (OMMG) meets at 3.15pm at the V&A Museum, London. We will look at Illuminated Manuscript Cuttings at the V&A, London in conversation with Catherine Yvard, National Art Library Special Collections Curator. Places are limited: please write to elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk by 10/05/2024.

Saturday 18th May:

  • Living Stones meets at 2pm in Iffley Church Hall for talks by Andrew Dunning and Anne Bailey on Oxford in 1160: Scholars and Pilgrims at St Frideswide’s Priory. For more information and Tickets please visit https://livingstonesiffley.org.uk/events.

I wish you a week of research joys and garden joys alike! 

A blue lion with orange and green leaves Description automatically generated with medium confidence[A flock of Medievalists visit the University Parks to find some summer joys] 
St John’s College MS. 61, f. 23 v.  
By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford 
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian 

How To Read Middle English Poetry

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12/05/2024

19:54

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blog

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By Daniel Sawyer

[Workers rebuild Troy, in a copy of John Lydgate’s Troy Book: Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Eng 1, f. 31v. Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence, CC-BY-NC 4.0.]

For most people, poetry in Middle English—roughly 1100 to 1500—is a world unknown. I’d long thought this a shame, but it was only through shaping How to Read Middle English Poetry as an accessible guide for students that I grasped just how innovative and thrilling the period in truth is.

Did you know, for instance, that someone unwittingly wrote a Shakespearean sonnet more than a century before Shakespeare’s birth? Or that the first poem we can attribute to a named woman displays a unique and startlingly intricate form? And while we think of English blank verse—metrically-regular poetry without regular rhyme or alliteration—as the mainstay of things like early-modern drama and Paradise Lost, the idea occurred to poets at least twice, independently, before the third (re)invention that started its sixteenth-century flourishing. Such facts lurk in the Middle English centuries, making these in some ways the most exciting spell in English poetry’s history.

What made this period so experimental?

For centuries after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, French stuck around as another spoken language alongside English—and a spoken language with more cachet. Latin, meanwhile, filled the role of the normative written language, often coming baked-in with literacy: those who learned to read learned to read in Latin, other literacies coming as a kind of by-product. 

Consequently, English lacked the reach of a prestigious tongue, but it also lacked prestige’s pressures. Several poetic traditions coexisted in English, without a clear hierarchy of prestige sorting them: it would, after all, always seem more elevated to write in Latin or French. As a result, this was the great age of experiment in English poetry.

It is in this period that we first see English poetry in alternating metres descended from post-classical Latin and early French. These metres are the ancestors of most regular verse of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. This was the metrical family in which Chaucer worked; within it, he invented the five-beat line that would one day propel poetry from Thomas Wyatt to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, not to mention the plays of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson.

At the same time, Middle English sustained a separate metrical family of poems descended from Old English verse habits: alliterative verse. Though somewhat changed from the Old English model, the verse of Piers Plowman, (most of) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and of the Alliterative Morte Arthure recognisably sits within English’s original and longest-lasting verse tradition. Such poems have a formal lineage which runs back before English was English. Also in this bucket lurks Layamon or Lawman, whose curious early Middle English Brut provokes expert debate over its classification, and offers the earliest known tales in English of King Arthur and King Lear.

Neither alternating verse nor alliterative verse held a place of straightforward prestige, distinguished from other poetry. The Gawain stanza switches between the two, showing us a poet comfortable shuttling across metrical lineages. Moreover, mixing traditions brought forth a third body of work, alliterative-stanzaic poetry, which married alliterating half-lines in alliterative metre to end-rhyme, often together with a fireworks display of other effects. One example, today known as ‘Three Dead Kings’ and preserved uniquely in the Bodleian, has a claim to the title of the most complex stanza-form in English at any time.

[The start of ‘Three Dead Kings’, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 302, f. 34r.]

In the sixteenth century and after, rising five-beat alternating lines—‘iambic pentameter’—would ascend to prestige as a standard form for art poetry. Through the same centuries, English slowly took over from Latin and French in the worlds of academia, government, religion, and the law. Today, English is a global language, and is the world’s most frequently learned tongue. For some contexts, it has come to hold the kind of roles that French and Latin once held in England: a prestige language, a source of loanwords and models.

In the twenty-first century, then, we might learn a few things by delving into the middle of English’s history, the language’s time of least social importance: Middle English teaches us to see how English is not a transparent default, but a tongue alongside others; it teaches us to appreciate the quirks in English, and in the other languages we meet. And often it is Middle English poetry that offers this lesson most clearly, while also forming a wildly creative and varied body of work in its own right.

Daniel’s book is due out in May 2024 from Oxford University Press. Readers can use the code AAFLYG6 to get 30% off either the hardback or the paperback when ordering How to Read Middle English Poetry direct from OUP.

Medieval Matters: Week 3

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06/05/2024

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Week 3 has arrived, and the term (and year) seem to be rushing by. Today is, of course, a bank holiday, but OMS is still here to bring you all of the latest Medieval News. I hope that you are all managing to get some rest as well as some work done. For those of you who (like me) feel that term is flying by, here is a reminder to slow down and enjoy our work, from the Epistolae project

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 6th May:

  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts. We will read a very entertaining account of the legendary foundation of Cambridge University by the Carmelite friar Nicholas Cantlow. Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites. https://web.maillist.ox.ac.uk/ox/info/medieval-latin-ms-reading
  • The Tolkien 50th Anniversary Seminar Series meets at 5pm in the Summer Common Room, Magdalen College. This week’s speaker will be Edmund Weiner (Oxford English Dictionary), ‘I always felt that something ought to be done about the word…’: Tolkien’s latchwords. For more information, please see https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College and on Teams. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, you can use this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker will be Helen Flatley (Somerville, Oxford): ‘Reading the Arabic Documents of Medieval Toledo: Local Practice and Community Formation on the Iberian Frontier’.

Tuesday 7th May:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 12.15pm in Lecture Room 2, English Faculty. This week’s speakers will be Audrey Southgate (Lincoln College, Oxford), ‘Playing the Ten-Stringed Lyre’: Psalter and Decalogue in the English Primers and Hannah Schühle-Lewis (University of Kent) ‘All suche clytter clatter’?: Medieval devotional compilations after the Reformation’. Seminars followed by a sandwich lunch. All welcome!
  • The Medieval French Seminar meets at 5pm at the Maison Francaise. Drinks will be served from 5pm; the presentations will start at 5:15pm. All are welcome! This week’s speaker will be Richard Trachsler (Zurich University), ‘God’s Tennisman: the Jeu de Paume allégorisé and the Difficulty of Playing Ball in the Late Middle Ages‘.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speakers will be James Buchanan (Kellogg) English Saints and the Normans:  tracing community and identity in the post conquest hagiography of St Dunstan and Cory Nguen (Univ.), Constructing Identity in 14thc Norman Ireland:  law, lyric, language. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.
  • Fourth Lyell Lecture: What happens when incunables replace manuscripts? at 5.15 at the Weston Library lecture theatre by Stephen Oakley (Cambridge): Copying the Classics (and Fathers): explorations in the transmission of Latin text. Book her for in-person attendance or live-stream.
  • Yossef Rapoport from Queen Mary’s will give a special presentation on “Livestock and Pastoralism in late-medieval Fayyum” at 5pm in the Fletcher Room, Trinity College. This talk is affiliated with the Oxford Collective for Nomadic and Pastoralist Peoples.

Wednesday 8th May:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets at 11.15am in Oriel College King Edward Street 7(Annette Volfing’s office; press the intercom buzzer to be let in). It will be a shortish planning meeting. The topic for this term is Konrad von Würzburg: ‘Der Schwanritter’. Open access edition here. If you are interested to be added to the teams group for updates, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
  • At 5pm in the Oxford Martin School, Prof Nicola Di Cosmo (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) will give an Environmental History Talk sponsored jointly by the Oxford Centre for European History and the Centre for Global History and the Oxford Martin School: Historical research in the time of the Anthropocene: can climate data help us read the past (and, if so, how)?.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles, Oxford, and online via Teams. Teams link: https://msteams.link/FW0C. This week’s speaker will be Natalija Ristovska (University of Oxford) –‘The Byzantine Craft of Enamelling and its Links with Islamic Metalwork, ca. 800-1204’.

Thursday 9th May:

  • The Environmental History Working Group meets at 12.30-2pm in the Ashmolean Museum for a tour. For updates on meeting details, refer to the EHWG tab on the Environmental History website. For further information or to join the EHWG mailing list, please email environmentalhistoryworkinggroup-owner@maillist.ox.ac.uk
  • The All Souls Seminar in Medieval and Early Modern Science meets at 2-3.30pm in the Hovenden Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Henrique Leitão (University of Lisbon), Global Lines and Nautical Cartography in the Iberian Oceanic Expansion.
  • Fifth Lyell Lecture: Some generalizations about the shape and geographical spread of Latin textual traditions at 5.15 at the Weston Library lecture theatre by Stephen Oakley (Cambridge): Copying the Classics (and Fathers): explorations in the transmission of Latin text. Book her for in-person attendance or live-stream.

Friday 10th May:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace. 
  • The Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group (OMMG) meets at 5pm in the Hawkins Room, Merton College. Sara Charles, School of Advanced Study, University of London will speak on Pigments and Illumination in the Middle Ages (practice-based). All materials are provided. £5 fee (the price is subsidised by the OMS grant). Places are limited: please write to elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk by 01/05/2024.
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group will meets at 5-6.30pm at the Julia Mann Room in St Hilda’s College, with the option to join remotely online. Those attending in person please be at the Lodge BY 5.00, where we will meet you and take you to the room in South Building. The texts, together with supplementary material, can be found on TT Padlet Please ensure you print the text (or bring it electronically), as we do not provide paper copies. Wine and soft drinks are available as usual!

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Stipendiary Lectureship in Old and Middle English: Exeter College are recruiting a fixed-term, part-time Stipendiary Lecturer post in Old Englis/Middle English. Please see the website for more details: https://www.exeter.ox.ac.uk/vacancies/sl-english/