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IMC 2026: Sessions

Session 1023: Loyalty across the Middle Ages, 500-1500, I: Loyalty and Literature

Wednesday 8 July 2026, 09:00-10:30

Sponsor:'Loyalty in the Medieval World' Research Group
Organisers:Eleanor Bailey, School of History, Philosophy & Digital Humanities, University of Sheffield
Katy Bennett, Department of History, University of York
Moderator/Chair:Hannah Boston, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge
Paper 1023-aLoyauté dort?: The Meaning of Loyalty in French Chivalric Literature, 12th-13th Centuries
(Language: English)
Arnaud Montreuil, Département des sciences humaines et sociales, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi
Thomas Pearson, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi
Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Political Thought, Social History
Paper 1023-b'Desirous to serve his fulle frend': The Ethics of Loyalty in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde
(Language: English)
Shauna Roach, Independent Scholar
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Political Thought, Social History
Paper 1023-cTreasonable Kings and Shifting Loyalties: Contesting Treason in Gower's Confessio Amantis
(Language: English)
Seonoh Kim, Department of English, Ohio State University
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Political Thought, Social History
Abstract

The ‘Loyalty in the Medieval World’ network has selected proposals which explore the intersections between the concept of ‘loyalty’ and the IMC 2026 theme of ‘temporalities’. We asked speakers to consider several questions. Was there was a shift in how the concept of loyalty was used and perceived by people across the Middle Ages? To what extent, if at all, were bonds of loyalty an archaic predecessor to the coercive potential of a centralising medieval ‘state’? How did the language (e.g. treue, fides, leal), theories, and practices of loyalty change or stay the same in the medieval period? What can the study of loyalty do for the historian of medieval political society? These sessions will explore these questions and contribute to the development of 'loyalty studies' within medieval history.

The first session, 'Loyalty across the Middle Ages, c. 500-1500 I: Loyalty and Literature', will explore how 'loyalty' was conceptualised and idealised within medieval literary texts, particularly in chivalric treatises.