IMC 2024: Sessions

The stories of crises served as a centrepiece of the historical narratives since the antiquity. Wars, natural catastrophes, political, social, or religious turmoils - events that endangered the stability of the community – have all served as catalyst for the written activity. Whether reporting the current events, responding to them, or reinventing the past ones, writers engaged with the notion of crisis and its implications. Our three-panel session aims to examine this complex relationship between crises and the written word. The first panel seeks to explore medieval narratives of crises: how they were understood, written about and woven into larger narration. Specifically, we want to examine which events were considered “crises”, what literary means were used to express them, and how author’s own perception influenced these narratives. Justine Audebrand’s paper examines how narrative of the succession crisis in the 11th century Germany, as depicted in the Annals of Quedlinburg, was deeply related to the gender relations. The paper jointly proposed by Adnré Descorps-Declère and Sébastien Villevieille proposes a comparative study of narratives concerning the crisis of the third century of Roman Empire, as it was depicted in the 9th century Byzantine and Frankish universal chronicles. Finally, paper of Kay Boers aims to explore the relationship between narratives of crises and the establishment of Christian and Islamic canonical norms in the 7th century.