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IMC 2003: Sessions

Session 1521: Language, Form and Forgery in Communal History

Thursday 17 July 2003, 09.00-10.30

Organiser:Jason K. Glenn, Department of History, University of Southern California
Moderator/Chair:Jason K. Glenn, Department of History, University of Southern California
Paper 1521-aLiterary Opportunism in a Pisan Vernacular Chronicle
(Language: English)
Laura K. Morreale, Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University, New York
Index terms: Language and Literature - Italian, Local History, Social History
Paper 1521-bHistorical Fabrication at 11th-Century Christ Church, Canterbury
(Language: English)
Tracey-Anne Cooper, Boston College, Massachusetts
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Old English, Literacy and Orality, Social History
Paper 1521-cWhat is Poetry?: The 'Rythmical Prose' of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and its Literary-Historical Context
(Language: English)
Renée R. Trilling, Department of English, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Old English, Literacy and Orality, Social History
Abstract

This interdisciplinary session will explore some of the social and political implications surrounding the often-unconventional choices of both form and content for writers of communal histories. For example, why did some historians choose to write in the vernacular rather than in Latin, or in verse rather than in prose? Why did some fabricate histories entirely? In particular, we will discuss how these deviations from standard historiography offer insight into the medieval world of the texts' creation, and consider how they might illuminate our understanding of the relationship between history, ideology and texuality.