IMC 2024: Sessions

This session has been grouped by the IMC Programming Committee from individually submitted paper proposals.

Paper a: In the winter of 1378, the popular emperor of the German-Roman Empire, Charles IV. died. The emperor’s death is mentioned in many sources, such as the work of the anonymous Augsburg chronicler, or MS II 15. In my presentation, I want to find an answer to the question, what could have motivated the events that took place at the funeral of the German emperor? Is it a unique funeral or was it influenced by other funeral ceremonies? Where did the idea come from, and what made the funeral of the German emperor so unique? A defining element of 14th-century Europe was the mourning procession connected with personification. Although the custom has ancient Roman roots, for some reason it really flourished in the 14th century. During my presentation, I would like to talk about symbolism, processions, personifications, and the final ceremony of German and European kings in the 9th-10th century, through examples from the 14-15th centuries. However, the custom of impersonation is not the 14-15th century, but in ancient Rome. In terms of its medieval origins, it first appeared in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Paper b: The ‘Erthe’ poem tradition was a devotional classic in later medieval England, and its constituent members are diverse. Some are quite short and riddling; some are much longer, mirroring more secular lyrical models. Robert Thornton’s version of ‘Erthe’ is of especial interest not only because of the ample knowledge of both the manuscript and its author we possess, when compared with other ‘Erthe’ poems, but also for its unique literary rhetoric. It is the only poem, save the very short Harleian 2253 version, that makes no explicit allusion to the sacred function of the text. While all others begin or end with explicit meditations on the vanity of life in the world when compared to life in heaven, Thornton’s "Erthe" is silent on this issue. It instead begins with a reminder of mankind’s earthenness from Genesis, and ends with a totalizing pessimism, Mors Soluit Omnia. This rhetorical strategy is quite similar to other texts within the Lincoln Thornton MS, as well as with the whole structure of the poem itself. Thornton’s work is suffused with a theme of destabilizing secular genres, characters, or realities, with the triumph of the sacred implied and of some importance, but rarely explicitly stated.

Paper c: After seven books, Arthur’s kingdom in Le Morte Darthur collapses in battle. This downfall peaks with the murder of wounded knights and scavenging of their bodies by a peasantry Malory accuses of treachery. Despite two separate endings and a “morte d’Arthur,” the text shows survival: even with the death of every major character, a new monarch and archbishop of Canterbury ascend - knighthood goes on. This paper seeks to inspect how the text, after emphasizing a ruinous destruction through two civil wars and the death of thousands alongside its titular character, subverts this ending by establishing continuity after the fall. Despite the psychodrama of “The Dolorous Death and Departing,” the text salves its full sociopolitical collapse and crisis into resilience and continuation.