IMC 2004: Sessions
Session 1108: Pigeonholes Past and Present: Interplay between Medieval and Modern Ethnographic Models
Wednesday 14 July 2004, 11.15-12.45
| Sponsor: | Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds |
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| Organisers: | Marianne O'Doherty, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds Philip A. Shaw, School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics, University of Sheffield |
| Moderator/Chair: | Orietta Da Rold, School of English, University of Leicester |
| Paper 1108-a | The Ivanhoe Ideal: Imposing 19th-Century Ethnic Categories on Anglo-Norman England (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Middle English, Language and Literature - French/ Occitan, Medievalism and Antiquarianism |
| Paper 1108-b | History, Past Races, and the Ethnicity of Elves (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Medievalism and Antiquarianism, Mentalities |
| Paper 1108-c | 14th-Century 'Ethnographies' of India: Readings Medieval and Modern (Language: English) Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Language and Literature - Comparative, Medievalism and Antiquarianism, Mentalities |
| Abstract | This session examines the relations between medieval and post-medieval models for understanding ethnicity and ethnography. Paper A discusses how Anglo-Norman literature dealt with ethnicity and considers nineteenth-century literary and scholarly (mis)appropriations of its ethnic categories. Paper B looks at the blurring of the concepts of the 'ethnic other' and the 'supernatural being' in medieval Scandinavian and other north-west European historiography relating to invasion and colonisation. Paper C focuses on the reactions of fourteenth-century readers of travel writing to constructions of Indian peoples and questions the usefulness of late twentieth-century concepts of otherness in understanding such ethnographic fictions. |