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IMC 2018: Sessions

Session 1212: Music, History, and Representation in the 13th and 14th Centuries

Wednesday 4 July 2018, 14.15-15.45

Moderator/Chair:Rachel McNellis, Department of Music, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
Paper 1212-aBunnies at Play: Music in the Marginalia
(Language: English)
Samantha Chang, Graduate Department of Art, University of Toronto, St. George
Index terms: Art History - Painting, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Music
Paper 1212-bLiterary Tradition as a Form of Cultural Memory: Reassessing the Importance of Literature for an Occitan Sense of Regional Identity through the Song of the Albigensian Crusade and the Academy of the Floral Games
(Language: English)
Jodie Miller, Department of Modern Foreign Languages & Literatures, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Social History
Abstract

Paper -a:
Musical animals - rabbits, monkeys, and dogs - are found in abundance in 13th-century manuscript marginalia. While these animals, along with jongleurs and musicians, have been regarded as moral anecdotes (Robertson 1963) and social projections (Camille 1992), the principles of the 'Guidonian hand' suggest that the depiction of musical elements triggers processes of recollection that move beyond the reproduction of the past, to active construction in the present (Carruthers 2008). But why portray musical animals? This paper will explore medieval thoughts on animal and human passions and analyse how the viewer acts as a cognitive respondent to the bunnies at play.

Paper -b:
The Old Occitan text, The Song of the Albigensian Crusade, recounts the crusade against the Albigensians in 13th century southern France. The text offers insight into connections between geography, literature, and history as a type of cultural memory leading to a reassessment of the status of Occitan literature and language through the Academy of the Floral Games (14th century) after the shared experiences of trauma, displacement, and resistance of the Albigensians. In an analysis of the concepts of 'deterritorialization' and 'reterritorialization' in What is Philosophy? by Derrida and Guattari, I will consider the importance of literary production in the renegotiation of an Occitan sense of regional identity.