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IMC 2005: Sessions

Session 1512: The Uses of Boys

Thursday 14 July 2005, 09.00-10.30

Organiser:Jeffrey J. Cohen, Department of English, George Washington University, Washington, DC
Moderator/Chair:Jeffrey J. Cohen, Department of English, George Washington University, Washington, DC
Paper 1512-aPuerulus
(Language: English)
Jeffrey J. Cohen, Department of English, George Washington University, Washington, DC
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Language and Literature - Latin
Paper 1512-bThe Child Christ and Pigs in the Oven
(Language: English)
Karl Steel, Columbia University
Index terms: Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English
Paper 1512-cRichard II is/as a Child
(Language: English)
Jon Kenneth Williams, Columbia University
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Political Thought
Abstract

This panel investigates how boyhood is constructed at some pivotal moments in English history: in post-conquest Norwich, as a local adolescent who had been brutally murdered is transformed into an innocent and tender saint; in an apocryphal Middle English tale, as Jesus transforms his Jewish playmates into pigs; & in the rhetorical construction of a twenty year old King Richard as a baffled boy at the mercy of scheming adults.