IMC 2024: Sessions
Session 1717: Early English Emotional and Moral Literary Crises
Thursday 4 July 2024, 14:15-15:45
| Organiser: | IMC Programming Committee, |
|---|---|
| Moderator/Chair: | Eleni Ponirakis, School of English, University of Nottingham |
| Paper 1717-a | Tempora periculosa: Responses to Dangerous Times - The Crisis Narrative in the Abingdon Charter of 993 (Language: English) Index terms: Charters and Diplomatics, Language and Literature - Latin, Politics and Diplomacy and Theology |
| Paper 1717-b | Negotiating Crisis through Homoerotic Desire: Feminising and Embracing Christ in Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe as Responses to Trauma (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Monasticism, Religious Life and Women's Studies |
| Paper 1717-c | St Patrick in Slavery (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Demography, Mentalities and Social History |
| Abstract | This session has been grouped by the IMC Programming Committee from individually submitted paper proposals. Paper a: How did King Aethelred II respond to the crises of the age, as a time for personal atonement or a spiritual requirement to prepare his people for the end times, the impending apocalypse? The charter for Abingdon Abbey in 993 AD was clear: Evil men (perfidi) had seized hereditary charters for land and privileges and issued new ones for themselves, ‘seduced by the madness of love of money’ (philargirie seductus amentia). While repentance and compensation were possible, forgiveness was not assured. This paper will argue that the naming of blameworthy individuals in the charter points to a form of scapegoating that was uncommon in legal documents of the time. Paper b: Extant medieval scholarship has amply explored the erotic metaphors in Julian and Kempe’s writings. All of these contribute to the existing literature of how Christ is treated as a male lover and their spiritual union is established through a sexual one. However, this paper explores how Christ is not embraced as a male figure, namely, the erotic metaphor is not masculine but feminine. Christ is treated as the Bride, de-masculinised and feminised as responses to the trauma of segregation from the mother’s womb into a cloistered life consisting of only females, and also owing to the fact of channelising and appropriating self-sexual desire in the female body itself. Paper c: In this presentation I will focus on the missionary saint Patrick in connection to slavery. Patrick or Patricius is an English saint from Roman Britannia adopted by the Irish as a Patron saint of Ireland. He is regarded by as the first Archbishop of Armagh in Armagh in Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Recently, the feature film The Patron Saint of Ireland was released in 2020. It is based on Patrick’s own texts and early tradition. The film can be seen on Netflix in the UK and Ireland. In other words, Saint Patrick is current in the history of UK and Ireland. My presentation is on Patrick’s time as a slave in Ireland. The approach is on slavery from a social historical perspective focusing on Patrick’s own confession about this dramatic time in his life. This theme of ‘Crisis’ is presented by Saint Patrick in his own autobiography Confessio. |