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IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 1239: Sonic Materialities: Non-Human Soundscapes

Wednesday 3 July 2019, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Converging Epistemologies
Organiser:Britton Elliott Brooks, Faculty of English, University of Oxford
Moderator/Chair:Britton Elliott Brooks, Faculty of English, University of Oxford
Paper 1239-aSound Information: Recovering How Anglo-Saxons Perceived and Identified Birds
(Language: English)
Eric Lacey, Department of English, Creative Writing & American Studies, University of Winchester
Index terms: Daily Life, Language and Literature - Old English, Science
Paper 1239-bAground and Aloft: Locations and Locutions of Birds in Riddles 7 and 8, 'The Seafarer', 'The Wanderer', and 'Maldon'
(Language: English)
Mark Atherton, Regent's Park College, University of Oxford
Index terms: Daily Life, Language and Literature - Old English, Religious Life
Paper 1239-cLively Fenlands: Hearing and Becoming in the Narratives of St Guthlac
(Language: English)
Rawitawan Sophonpanich, Department of History, Philosophy & English Literature, Thammasat University, Bangkok
Index terms: Hagiography, Language and Literature - Latin, Language and Literature - Old English, Monasticism
Abstract

Research into depictions of the non-human world in Anglo-Saxon literature often focuses on the visual. This privileging of one part of our sensory world necessarily restricts our critical understanding of the ways the Anglo-Saxons engaged with, as well as represented, their physical world in their cultural productions. In order to address this scholarly lacuna, this session will explore issues of non-anthropogenic sounds. Eric Lacey will explore the relationship between aural information, species identification, and perception of birds in Old English. Mark Atherton will continue our avian focus by examining the connection between locations and locutions of birds in a variety of Old English texts. And Rawitawan Sophonpanich will explore how inseparable aurality of the non-human world is from culture and other human constructs such as identities, subjectivities, and ideologies.