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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 815: Borders or Boundaries: A Journey through Old Germanic Internal Borders

Tuesday 7 July 2020, 16.30-18.00

Organiser:Letizia Vezzosi, Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Studi Interculturali, Università degli Studi di Firenze
Paper 815-aThe Thin Red Line between Magic and Medicine: The Case of Middle English Healing Charms
(Language: English)
Letizia Vezzosi, Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Studi Interculturali, Università degli Studi di Firenze
Index terms: Folk Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Medicine
Paper 815-bCrossing Borders between Countries and Religions in Sigvatr Þórðarson's Skaldic Stanzas
(Language: English)
Maria Cristina Lombardi, Dipartimento di Studi Letterari Linguistici e Comparati Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale
Index terms: Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Pagan Religions, Rhetoric
Abstract

The word of 'borders' will immediately recall to us the image of people moving across borders, which delimite and identify states and nationalities. In Middle Ages, this was not the case: people moved between 'power-defined political areas', not across national borders, but, at most, across different geographical spaces into these realities, bringing with them their culture, their religion, their language and sometimes their laws. Accordingly within those 'power-defined political areas' there were cultural, linguistic, legal borders to be crossed. In the present session, we would like to test such a claim within the Old Germanic world.