IMC 2008: Sessions
Session 517: Writing the Natural World, I: Literature and the Heavens
Tuesday 8 July 2008, 09.00-10.30
| Sponsor: | Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research, Swansea University |
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| Organiser: | Simon Meecham-Jones, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge / Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research, Swansea University |
| Moderator/Chair: | Liz Herbert McAvoy, Department of English Language & Literature, Swansea University |
| Paper 517-a | Heaven and Earth: Cosmography in the Middle Ages (Language: English) Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Language and Literature - Comparative, Science |
| Paper 517-b | Heaven and the Written Word in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Philosophy, Theology |
| Paper 517-c | Chasing the Roebuck: Criticism, Ecology, and the Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Celtic, Language and Literature - Comparative |
| Abstract | This session examines the language used to describe the heavens in medieval writing. The first paper considers the failure of medieval thought to develop a sustained tradition of cosmography. The second paper considers how the imagery of the heavens is used as a means of validating human systems of reason, and Chaucer's unease at the claims of literature to be able to map and explain the cosmos. The third paper examines how Dafydd ap Gwilym uses imagery from the natural world to comment ironically on the ways in which writers of love poetry had identified their desire with the Heavens (in both senses) as a means of qualifying its physical and 'animal' |