IMC 2008: Sessions

Following the publication of its vast register of Anglo-Saxon literary sources, the collaborative research project Fontes Anglo-Saxonici recently decided to disband. Over three decades, this AHRC-funded project produced research on Anglo-Saxon textual composition, leaving a lasting impression in the field of medieval source study. As one of its last undertakings, the project decided to sponsor a session at the IMC2008 which was to encourage younger scholars in the study of literary sources used in Anglo-Saxon England. The proposed session has therefore gathered three postgraduate students and one academic moderator (all now based in the United Kingdom, but originally from three different countries and two continents), who are engaged in research on literary comparison. The focus of the proposed session is on the relationship between texts and the influences of literary authors upon one another. Although related in their methodology, the three papers will study a variety of literary and historical themes (sensory perception, the changing image of a nation in space and time, and almsgiving). The session hopes to highlight the widespread and long-lived distribution of these themes in the history of ideas, and the importance of source study.