IMC 2018: Sessions
Session 833: Communication and the Exploitation of Knowledge, IV: Shaping Memories through Letter Collections
Tuesday 3 July 2018, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Onderzoeksschool Mediëvistiek, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen |
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| Organiser: | Theo Lap, Afdeling Geschiedenis, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen |
| Moderator/Chair: | Pieter Boonstra, Afdeling Geschiedenis, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen |
| Paper 833-a | One Voice, One Memory, One Identity?: The Creation and Use of Letter Collections in Late Medieval Convents (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - German, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Monasticism, Women's Studies |
| Paper 833-b | Blurred Memories: Letter Collections and the Future - Bernard versus Abelard (Language: English) Index terms: Charters and Diplomatics, Language and Literature - Latin, Religious Life, Rhetoric |
| Paper 833-c | The Meme of a Lifetime: Exemplary Knowledge in High Medieval Letter Collections (Language: English) Index terms: Education, Language and Literature - Latin, Monasticism, Religious Life |
| Paper 833-d | The Threshold of the Reader: Does the Monastic Rule Represent the Ending of Abelard and Heloise's Letter Collection? (Language: English) Index terms: Anthropology, Language and Literature - Latin, Monasticism, Religious Life |
| Abstract | Organised from the NWO project 'Communication and Exploitation of Knowledge in the Middle Ages', this series of papers aims to discuss a variety of instances of public or collective memory. Memory is the basis for knowledge; for a fruitful mass communication of knowledge, it needs to connect to elements in the collective memory. Medieval letter collections have a unique way of dynamically organizing the contents of their individual constituents. Letters encompass literary personas in an embedded environment of textually disseminated knowledge, which comes together in the final product of an edited compilation. As such they have the potential to utilize memories from the historical figures mentioned in them for the sake of creating new collective memories for communal edification. This session discusses a variety of high and late medieval letter collections, and particularly their organizational qualities, in order to analyze epistolography as a textual mode of expression that uses, repurposes, and shapes memory. |