IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 1118: Medieval Ecocriticisms, II: Crafting and Defining Nature

Wednesday 8 July 2020, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:	Medieval Ecocriticisms
Organiser:	Michael Bintley, School of Humanities, Canterbury Christ Church University
Moderator/Chair:	Michael J. Warren, Department of English, Royal Holloway, University of London
Paper 1118-a	Concealing and Revealing 'Craft' in Exeter Book Poems and Riddles (Language: English) James Antonio Paz, School of Arts, Languages & Cultures, University of Manchester Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Technology
Paper 1118-b	The Edge of the Woods: Species and Gender in Le Roman de Silence (Language: English) Aylin Malcolm, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Science
Paper 1118-c	Disability and Environment in Old English Poetry (Language: English) Heide Estes, Department of English, Monmouth University, New York Index terms: Daily Life, Language and Literature - Old English
Abstract	These papers address human approaches to ordering and organising the world in the Middle Ages, investigating methods and modes of description through which humans endeavoured to define and categorise humans, non-human animals, and environment - or to question the unstable boundaries between them. Paz explores the interplay between divine 'craft' and acts of making and transformation by early medieval poets and other craftspeople; Malcolm considers interwoven hierarchies of gender and species in the 13th-century Roman de Silence as a means of interrogating contemporary classificatory schemes; and Estes discusses parallel approaches to disability and environment in early English poetry.