Paper -a:
The medieval historian Lynn White is well known for his claim that our present ecological crisis has its origins in the medieval period. He argued that the anthropocentric nature of Christianity was especially emphasized in the medieval period and this developed into the exploitative attitude to nature which dominates the modern world view. I shall argue, however, that a more convincing argument comes from Hans Blumenberg, who has shown that the trajectory that creates modernity and its ecological crisis does indeed begin in the medieval period, but it is rooted more in Gnosticism than it is in Christianity.
Paper -b:
In Against Transgression (2008), Ashley Tauchert claimed that critical thought was in danger of 'wallowing in transgression'. This paper confronts that criticism and traces the development of 'transgression' as a critical concept within the conditions of late 20th century academic culture. Does the modernity of the concept make using it anachronistic for the medievalist? I confront this question through a discussion of how the word 'transgressioun' and its Latin and Anglo-Norman antecedents were used in late medieval England. This paper addresses to what extent the late medieval ideological apparatus about rules and rule-breaking resembled and differed from our own.
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