IMC 2020: Sessions
Session 1701: 'Weaving Stories': The Mythographic Writings of Thomas Walsingham
Thursday 9 July 2020, 14.15-15.45
| Sponsor: | German Historical Institute London (GHIL) |
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| Organiser: | Bernhard Hollick, Institut für Altertumskunde, Universität zu Köln / College of Humanities, University of Exeter |
| Moderator/Chair: | Stephan Bruhn, Historisches Seminar/Mittelalterliche Geschichte, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel |
| Paper 1701-a | 'Tam rationabiles causae quam utiles': Walsingham on Pagan Myth (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Pagan Religions, Philosophy |
| Paper 1701-b | Naturalised Citizens: Thomas Walsingham's Genealogies of the Pagan Earth (Language: English) Index terms: Genealogy and Prosopography, Language and Literature - Latin, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Pagan Religions |
| Paper 1701-c | What Did It Mean to Paraphrase Dictys of Crete in Late Medieval England?: The Case of Thomas Walsingham’s Ditis ditatus (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Rhetoric |
| Abstract | Thomas Walsingham (c.1422), precentor of St Albans, was by no means the first medieval writer to engage with Greco-Roman mythology. However, he did so in a time, when the occupation with pagan narrative came increasingly under pressure - not only by Wyclif, but also from within the Benedictine order. Walsingham's mythographic writings are a response to that challenge: they reinforce the relevance of the 'poetic fables' by introducing a new, historicizing approach, which reaches beyond the medieval allegorical tradition, but is still untouched by humanism. The session will present new insights into his rewriting of ancient mythology. |