Women’s Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon
University of Bergen, Norway
22-24 June, 2017
This international conference is organized by Professor Diane Watt and Dr Laura Saetveit Miles as part of the Leverhulme International Network, ‘Women’s Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon’, led by the University of Surrey, in collaboration with the Universities of Bangor, Bergen, Boston, Durham, Lausanne, Swansea, and Texas A&M. For further information please visit the network website: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/medievalwomen.
Over the last three decades medieval women’s writing has become a significant focus of innovative research. Yet, despite this wealth of ground-breaking scholarship, the established canon of medieval literature has remained fundamentally unchallenged. This conference will explore the importance of considering women’s engagement with textual culture in understanding the medieval literary canon. While the network has hitherto focused largely on English texts and traditions, we welcome papers that focus on European sources.
Themes that will be explored in the conference include:
- Women as authors
- Women as patrons
- Book ownership in the household
- Anonymous texts
- Genre and gender
- Literary reception
- Women as translators
- Women readers
- Book ownership in women’s religious communities
- Manuscript production
- Literary influence
- Collaboration
We anticipate contributors giving papers of 20-30 minutes. Please submit proposed titles and abstracts of 300 words, with a short academic biography, by 15 September, 2016 to Lynette Kerridge: l.kerridge@surrey.ac.uk.
