IMC 2021: Sessions

The papers in this session offer fresh scrutiny of the diverse sources for the crusades and the Latin East, and demonstrate the value of utilising different methodological frameworks, such as narrative theory, to interrogate texts in the broader context of medieval historical writing. Paper A aims to highlight neglected English accounts of the First Crusade - especially those written in Old English - and to shed new light on the earliest crusading historiography, in particular local contexts in Anglo-Norman England, long before the emergence of an extensive narrative corpus in England following the Third Crusade. Paper B examines the reactions to the loss of Jerusalem (1187) in western historical writing in light of the city-lament genre, demonstrating how the sources were informed by this genre through the mediation of the Old Testament Lamentations and efforts, seen through contemporary newsletters from the East and papal reactions at uniting Christianity in an emotional community of lamenting the loss. Paper C analyses John of Joinville's Vie de Saint Louis to consider how an elite man wrote about his own masculinity in the first person and thus the value of this text as a window onto lived masculinity during the crusades.