IMC 2022: Sessions
Session 630: Fringe Expertise?: Occult Practices and Authority in Pre-Modern Eurasia, II - Narration and Representation
Tuesday 5 July 2022, 11.15-12.45
| Sponsor: | Project 'The Sorcerer's Handbook: Medieval Arabic Magic in Context', University of Exeter / Leverhulme Trust |
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| Organisers: | Geoffrey Humble, Department of History, University of Birmingham Sarah Ortega, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds |
| Moderator/Chair: | Geoffrey Humble, Department of History, University of Birmingham |
| Paper 630-a | Folkloric Reading of the Presence of the Occult in Byzantine Incubation Literature: The Case of London, British Library, Addenda, 37534 (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Folk Studies, Medicine |
| Paper 630-b | From Fangshi to Wuxi: Reading Occult Specialists in Yuan Chinese Historiography (Language: English) Index terms: Archives and Sources, Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Other |
| Paper 630-c | Ridley in the Malay Peninsula: Colonial Readings of Medieval Magic (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Medievalism and Antiquarianism |
| Abstract | These paired sessions bring together papers that provide a cross-cultural comparison of the social forces that shaped pre-modern occult practices and their legacies. This second session examines how representation and narration define these practices. Giulia Gollo applies literary and folkloric analysis to hagiographical healing accounts, illuminating the shifting nature of authority and perceptions of illness in Byzantium. Geoff Humble maps the selective presentation of occult specialists against authoritative cultural frameworks in Mongol-era Chinese texts. Sarah Ortega interrogates the converging influence of medieval textual traditions and European theories of medievalism and primitivism in early 20th-century records of Malay folk practices. |