IMC 2021: Sessions
Session 1712: Come Rain or Rhyme: Weather in Medieval Literature
Thursday 8 July 2021, 14.15-15.45
| Organisers: | Aylin Malcolm, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania Andrew Richmond, Department of English, Ohio State University |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Andrew Richmond, Department of English, Ohio State University |
| Paper 1712-a | Theomenia and Philanthropia: Natural Disaster in the Chronicle of John of Nikiu and the Chronographia of John Malalas (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Social History |
| Paper 1712-b | The Winds of Change: Hildegard of Bingen and the Cardinal Winds (Language: English) Index terms: Science, Theology |
| Paper 1712-c | Exciting Storms: Weather Phenomena as Catalysts of Chivalric Adventures (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Comparative, Language and Literature - German |
| Paper 1712-d | Signum, monstrum, prodigium: Weather Phenomena in Jan Długosz's Annales (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin |
| Abstract | Everyday weather events structured medieval human life, dictating the schedule of the agricultural year and creating a sense of continuity across generations. Dramatic storms, on the other hand, could decimate human and non-human communities alike, particularly during periods of climatic variation. Popular and academic traditions of meteorological prediction thus developed, while theological authorities read divine will in the vagaries of lightning, wind, and rain. All of these discourses and lived realities inspired diverse literary reactions. This panel explores the roles of weather in medieval literature, from romance to chronicles, and from the mundane to the apocalyptic. |