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IMC 2022: Sessions

Session 1001: Corpus or Corpus?: Exhuming Bodies from Texts and Texts from Exhumed Bodies

Wednesday 6 July 2022, 09.00-10.30

Sponsor:MRC Project 'The Human Remains: Digital Library of British Mortuary Science & Investigation'
Organisers:Llewelyn Hopwood, Faculty of English / Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford
Ruth Nugent, Department of History & Archaeology, University of Chester
Moderator/Chair:Kate Giles, Department of Archaeology, University of York
Paper 1001-aExcavating Linguistic Patterns from Semantically Tagged Data: A Case Study of the Human Remains Digital Library
(Language: English)
Isabelle Gribomont, Centre de traitement automatique du langage, Université catholique de Louvain
Index terms: Computing in Medieval Studies, Hagiography, Mentalities
Paper 1001-b'You've gone too far': Crossing Boundaries and Disapproving Witnesses in Medieval English Mortuary Accounts
(Language: English)
Glenn Cahilly-Bretzin, Lincoln College / Faculty of English, University of Oxford
Index terms: Gender Studies, Hagiography, Language and Literature - Latin, Lay Piety
Paper 1001-cNavigating the Boundaries of Exhumed Bodies: The Human Remains Project
(Language: English)
Ruth Nugent, Department of History & Archaeology, University of Chester
Index terms: Anthropology, Archaeology - General, Mentalities, Social History
Paper 1001-dSeeing the Tangible through the Lens of the Intangible: Medieval Romance Literature, Deathscapes, and the Castle
(Language: English)
Rachel Elizabeth Swallow, Department of History & Archaeology, University of Chester
Index terms: Archaeology - Sites, Architecture - Religious, Geography and Settlement Studies, Language and Literature - Comparative
Abstract

The boundaries between the body as 'corpus' and the text as 'corpus' is a tantalising yet elusive area of medieval enquiry. Even less understood and yet more intellectually potent is the process of 'exhumation' in both the literal and metaphorical senses of retrieving, resurrecting, and reconstructing dead bodies from texts and also producing texts from the examination of dead bodies in the Middle Ages. By situating their research between the boundaries of archaeology, linguistics, history, literature, and computer science, these papers explore the patterns and nuances of bodily and textual interplay in medieval accounts of exhumation.