Skip to main content

IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 509: National Identity and Medieval History Writing, I: Landscape and Climate

Tuesday 2 July 2019, 09.00-10.30

Organisers:Henry Marsh, Department of History, University of Exeter
Trevor Russell Smith, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Moderator/Chair:Daniel Franke, Department of History, Richard Bland College of William & Mary, Virginia
Paper 509-aUrban and Rural Landscapes in Narratives of the Glyndŵr Revolt, 1400-1415
(Language: English)
Jennifer Ruggier, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Social History
Paper 509-bSomething in the Airs: Physicality, Global, National, and Sub-National Identity in Courtly Literature of the Latin West in the 12th and 13th Centuries
(Language: English)
Owain Nash, Department of History, University of Bristol
Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Mentalities, Political Thought
Paper 509-cRepresenting Identity in a Maritime Landscape: Vikings, Normans, and Hybridity in the Irish Sea
(Language: English)
Caitlin Ellis, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge
Abstract

This series of four sessions examines the relationship between concepts of ethnic and national identity in the historical literature of the Middle Ages. Papers in this session engage with how national identities were imagined through the landscape and climate. The first paper examines how chroniclers constructed identity in Owain Glyndwr's revolt through landscapes. The second paper considers how both national and regional identities were imagined through theories of climate, suggesting that the disparities between local and national characteristics complicate the conception of the relationship between the environment and the body. The third paper explores the representation of Normans and Scandinavians in the setting of the maritime landscape of the Irish Sea, and assesses whether the hybrid identities apparent in the region were reflected in historical writing.