Do we overestimate the impact that the transient socio-political and formal linguistic borders of Western Europe had on the literary culture of the pre-nation state era?

While most current scholarship acknowledges the porous borders of medieval Europe, we continue to think in the context of linguistic and political borders when considering the circulation of texts, using national language categories and political ‘landmarks’ as fixed points by which to structure our understanding of how medieval texts were disseminated. This conference invites scholars to re-examine such discourses of separation, and consider the case for continuity in the language, content or imagery of medieval texts and stories that were adapted and refashioned in different regions.

Contact: Dr. Miriam Edlich-Muth, muth.miriam[at]gmail.com

Programme

Friday 21 July

8.30–9.00 a.m. Registration
9.00–9.15 a.m. Welcome

9.15–10.15 a.m. Religious Communities and Collaboration across Time and Space

Victoria Blud (University of York):
Soul Sisters: Medieval Mystics, Recusant Readers, and Women’s Literary Communities

Joshua Easterling (Murray State University/FU Berlin):
Coming to Perfection: Margaret the Lame and Collaborative Theology

10.15–10.45 a.m. Coffee break

10.45–11.45 a.m. Keynote I

Lars Boje Mortensen (University of Southern Denmark):
Western Imperial Literature (c.1050–1320) – A Productive Object of Study?

12.00–1.30 p.m. Buffet lunch at the SFB Villa

1.30–2.30 p.m. (Pseudo-)Histories and National Traditions

Marianne Ailes (University of Bristol):
Charlemagne Narratives in the Multilingual British Isles

Adrien Quéret-Podesta (Palacký University, Olomouc):
Mechanisms of Transfer of Annalistic Works from German Lands to Central Eastern Europe around the Year 1000

2.30–3.00 p.m. Coffee break

3.00–4.00 p.m. Didactic Texts Across Europe

Emunah Levy (Bar-Ilan University, Israel):
The Book of Medicines of Asaph the Physician: A Study Case for the Transmission of a Medical Text in the Medieval Jewish Diaspora

Claudia Wittig (University of Ghent):
Writing ‘Didactic Communities’ in High Medieval Europe – The Moralium dogma philosophorumand its Vernacular Translations

6.15–7.30 p.m. Performance

Nasreddin Hodja and Other Stories by Serap Güven
at the Museum Europäischer Kulturen, with drinks from 5.45 p.m.

7.45 p.m. Dinner at the Restaurant Luise

Saturday 22 July

9.00–10.00 a.m. Keynote II

Christine Putzo (University of Lausanne):
On the History of the European Floire Romance: The Evidence of the Fragmentary Ripuarian Version

10.00–10.15 a.m. Coffee break

10.15–11.15 a.m. European Romance

Sofia Lodén (Stockholm University/Ca’ Foscari University of Venice):
Children of Medieval Europe: Floire and Blanscheflur in Different Literary Traditions

Lydia Zeldenrust (University of York):
Mélusine on the Move: Reassessing a Shared European Tradition

11.15–11.30 a.m. Coffee break

11.30 a.m.–12.30 p.m. Readers between East and West

Massimiliano Gaggero (University of Milan):
Historiography without Borders: The Long-Lasting Influence of the Estoires d’Eracles

Falk Quenstedt (FU Berlin):
The Marvellous in Transfer: Sindbad, the Sailor (as-Sindibād al-baḥrī) and Different Versions of Herzog Ernst

12.30–1.00 p.m. Closing discussion