IMC 2003: Sessions
Session 1018: 'It's Not Who You Know, It's What You Know': Knowledge, Representation and Authority
Wednesday 16 July 2003, 09.00-10.30
| Sponsor: | Harvard University |
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| Organiser: | Ziva Mann, Department of English & American Literature & Language, Harvard University |
| Moderator/Chair: | Veerle Fraeters, Ruusbroecgenootschap, Universiteit Antwerpen |
| Paper 1018-a | Social and Gendered Authority in the Bestiaire d'Amour presented to the Count and Countess of Guelders (Language: English) Index terms: Education, Language and Literature - Dutch, Language and Literature - German, Learning (The Classical Inheritance) |
| Paper 1018-c | 'Cherchez le Roi': Cultural Conflict and Annexing in Sir Orfeo (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Mentalities, Politics and Diplomacy |
| Abstract | This panel explores questions of power and authority, as seen in the interaction between repositories of knowledge and moments of ignorance. Van Dalen-Oskam looks at a late 13th-century Lower Rhine translation of Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'Amour, examining the situating of social and gendered authority in practical knowledge. Recognizing Abelard's role of recalcitrant judge, Wouters considers how the interfaith debate in his Dialogue highlights questions of ethical authority. Finally, Mann discusses the ways in which political authority in the Middle English Sir Orfeo is bound up with knowledge and cultural conflict, as fairy and human worlds collide. In each paper, culturally and conceptually representative figures interrogate bodies of knowledge, and thereby themselves, and occasionally admit defeat. |