IMC 2016: Sessions

Following the success of last year's single IMC session on 'Writing history in the Anglo-Norman World: Cartularies as History', this is the fourth of four sessions designed to broaden both the geographical and chronological scope of discussions held in 2015. Cartularies, at least in the world of Anglophone scholarship, remain an under-problematised source. Until recently, editions of such texts have treated them unquestioningly as largely record sources, concerned with the administration of archives, property and rights. This focus on administration rather than historicising has generated conflicting approaches to cartularies and their definition, leading to such problematic terms as 'Cartulary-Chronicle'. In these sessions we hope to rethink this approach and place cartularies firmly in the genre of historical writing and what we think of as narrative and literary sources. It is hoped that papers will consider the origins, composition, transmission and later uses of specific cartularies or groups of similar texts produced in Western Europe, c. 900-1200 In this final session, discussions will focus on later examples of the cartulary-history genre, before a general question and answer session on the topics covered in this and the previous three sessions and a discussion on future plans for discussion and potential avenues for publication.