IMC 2011: Sessions
Session 1316: Wealth on the Margins of Literary Culture
Wednesday 13 July 2011, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Cambridge Online Graduate Journal Marginalia |
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| Organiser: | Miriam Edlich-Muth, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge |
| Moderator/Chair: | Miriam Edlich-Muth, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge |
| Paper 1316-a | Material Poverty Yet Artistic Wealth: The Paradox of the Goliards (Language: English) Index terms: Economics - General, Language and Literature - Latin, Literacy and Orality |
| Paper 1316-b | 'The Vertu of the Dyamaund': Gemstones, Knowledge, and Value in The Book of John Mandeville (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - General, Economics - Trade, Language and Literature - Middle English |
| Paper 1316-c | Between the Court and the Marketplace: On the Margins with Chaucer's Wife of Bath and the Late Medieval Poet” (Language: English) Index terms: Economics - Trade, Language and Literature - Middle English, Politics and Diplomacy |
| Abstract | This session deals with the ambivalent relationship between wealth and marginality in medieval literature and society. In this context, it looks at the effect of social marginality and vagrancy on the creation of literary wealth in 'Goliardic' poetry, at the ways in which the exchange of symbolic valuables shapes Mandeville's account of his travels from the margins of the text, and finally at how economic materialism creates its own metaphor of social identity - not only in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, but in the court experiences of Chaucer himself. As these papers illustrate, the striking symbolic and economic power of wealth was constantly redrawing both social and poetic margins in the literature of the Middle Ages. This session attempts to provide a basis for discussing the effect of this shifting framework on both the authors and the works of the period. |