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 |
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Moderator/Chair: | Liam Lewis, Department of French Studies, University of Warwick |
Paper 1716-a | The Allegorisation of Conventual Community: Mechtild of Hackeborn's Relocated Bees (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Religious Life, Women's Studies |
Paper 1716-b | Animal as Author?: Albert the Great and Animal Encounters in De animalibus (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Theology |
Paper 1716-c | Unruly Hermeneuts: Reading Animals in Late Medieval Fables (Language: English) 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. |