IMC 2007: Sessions
Session 817: Cities in the Literary Imagination, II: Cityscapes - (Sub-)Urban Landscapes in the Medieval Imagination
Tuesday 10 July 2007, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Department of English, King's College, University of London |
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| Organiser: | Malte Urban, Department of English, King's College London |
| Moderator/Chair: | Malte Urban, Department of English, King's College London |
| Paper 817-a | Los espacios imaginarios del Más Allá a través de la literatura de visiones en la Edad Media (Language: Español) Index terms: Art History - General, Literacy and Orality, Mentalities, Theology |
| Paper 817-c | City and Instability in the Middle English Pearl (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Comparative, Language and Literature - Middle English |
| Abstract | The effect of cityscapes on the creative imagination has in recent years become one of the countless concerns of contemporary cultural criticism, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to the medieval roots of the perception of urban environments. Building upon the considerable recent work on the city in the Middle Ages, this session aims to address this critical vacuum by bringing together papers that discuss the relationship of town and country in the medieval imagination. Can we sustain a belief in an ultimate and insurmountable otherness of the medieval imagination or are the medieval and postmodern views of cityscapes in fact two sides of the same coin? I welcome abstracts of papers that address the medieval perception of cityscapes, both from within the city and from the countryside, and that assess the position of the study of the medieval city within the wider disciplinary discourse in literature, history and related fields. |