IMC 2026: Sessions
Session 1715: Chroniclers and Information in 13th-Century Britain, II: Compiling and Processing Information
Thursday 9 July 2026, 14:15-15:45
| Organisers: | Ian Stone, Department of History, Dartmouth College Marie Tranchant, Department of History, King's College London |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Lars Kjær, Faculty of History, Northeastern University London |
| Paper 1715-a | Compilation and Narrative in 13th-Century Britain (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Social History |
| Paper 1715-b | Making a Chronicle from Documents: The Case of Burton Abbey (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Social History |
| Paper 1715-c | A Chronicle in Motion: How Scribes Updated the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Social History |
| Abstract | Chroniclers across thirteenth-century Britain used news texts to compose and compile their narratives. Some are well-known, like Matthew Paris, whose proximity to London and access to the means of one of the largest abbeys in England explain his ability to collect information. For chronicles of smaller localities, or with smaller means, however, much remains unclear. The proposed sessions aim to look at the circulation of news and information in medieval Britain and the way they were received and processed by chroniclers. The first session will look at the process of gathering news. It will explore the networks to which chroniclers had access, reflect more broadly on how news circulated in different areas of medieval Britain, and highlight the regional and social discrepancies. The second session will focus on what happened once pieces of information had been collected, that is, the actions of compiling and processing information. What did it mean to publish news? In keeping with the conference theme of temporalities, how did urgency manifest itself both in the language of news texts and the way in which chroniclers used them in their texts? What happened when news texts became ‘old news’, why were they preserved, and why did chroniclers insert them in narratives? |