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IMC 2021: Sessions

Session 1716: Drawing the Animal into the Medieval Book: The Non-Human Displaced

Thursday 8 July 2021, 14.15-15.45

Organiser:Louise Campion, Department of English & Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick
Moderator/Chair:Liam Lewis, Department of French Studies, University of Warwick
Paper 1716-aThe Allegorisation of Conventual Community: Mechtild of Hackeborn's Relocated Bees
(Language: English)
Louise Campion, Department of English & Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Religious Life, Women's Studies
Paper 1716-bAnimal as Author?: Albert the Great and Animal Encounters in De animalibus
(Language: English)
Zachary Matus, Department of History, Boston College, Massachusetts
Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Theology
Paper 1716-cUnruly Hermeneuts: Reading Animals in Late Medieval Fables
(Language: English)
Annika Pattenaude, College of Literature, Science & the Arts, University of Michigan
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Learning (The Classical Inheritance)
Abstract

Medieval writers, from visionary women to the male writers of spiritual guidance manuals, routinely make use of nonhuman figures in the course of explicating their thoughts and ideas. This literary displacement of nonhuman figures shifts them from their 'natural' environment into a range of different positions, as they are repurposed as rhetorical and instructional tools for readers. This panel seeks to explore the consequences of this authorial relocation of the nonhuman figure. In particular, it will foster discussion about 'natural' vs built environments, the positionality of nonhuman animals in medieval narrative, and anthropocentric hermeneutics in medieval fables.