IMC 2026: Sessions
Session 1532: Reading Repetition, I: Non-Linear Temporalities and Intertextual Repetitions as a Theological Device
Thursday 9 July 2026, 09:00-10:30
| Organisers: | Brooklyn Arnot, Faculty of English, University of Oxford Marie Sophie Besson, Íslensku- og menningardeild, Háskóli Íslands, Reykjavík / Mondes Germaniques et Nord-Européens (UR 1341), Université de Strasbourg |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Brooklyn Arnot, Faculty of English, University of Oxford |
| Paper 1532-a | 'Say hwæt again': Textual Echoes in the Old Saxon Genesis (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Comparative, Language and Literature - German, Language and Literature - Old English, Rhetoric |
| Paper 1532-b | Pryveté or History: The Life of Judas and Recurring Sin-Stories in The Destruction of Jerusalem (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Middle English, Religious Life, Theology |
| Paper 1532-c | An Odd Toast: Augustinian Ideas in Hallfreðar saga vandræðaskálds and Flóamanna saga (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Religious Life |
| Paper 1532-d | 'Where is thy place?': Reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight through The Turke and Sir Gawain (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Comparative, Language and Literature - Middle English, Theology |
| Abstract | Medieval stories are thick with the resonances of motifs, events and characters which are repeated time after time. Using repetition, stories are able to make certain events thick with semantic layers as each iteration reconceptualises the same motif, often spiralling and crescendoing into a climax. Later rewritings bring back these dynamics: intertextuality then becomes a mode of interpretation, while it reanimates medieval temporalities, and uses them to question modern conceptions - or vice versa. In this dialogue through time, returns and loops break the linearity and offer a new relationship to medieval materials. This session will consider how medieval writers used repetitions of events and motifs, disturbing a sense of linear time and allowing these events to resonate with complex semantic layers. It engages with reception studies, exploring how medieval authors have reimagined older texts. Two papers in this session will analyse (quite different forms of) Christian poetry, drawing attention to how poets use repetition and typology to forge rich and complex interpretations of Biblical characters. The other two papers examine texts which, while not overtly Christian, use the study of repetitions to uncover the relationship between paganism and Christianity in the Middle Ages. |