L'Agenda des Médiévistes

The format of the conference will be much as it is in person. There will be substantial papers lasting 40-45 minutes with a significant question time allotted to each paper. After each question time, the session will remain open for delegates to stay and talk informally with one another before the next session starts.  The zoom meeting will run continuously for the whole of each day. There will also be a poster session and any postgraduate students who wish to give a poster should email the address below.   In order to book your place, please register via the email address: battlewebsite@gmail.com  You will then be sent the details of the zoom meeting which we would be most grateful if you would not circulate. Only those applying via the conference email will receive a zoom link, and the use of an existing invitation by another person won’t be permitted.   But do encourage those who you know will be interested to contact me directly for the zoom link.   When you join the zoom meeting, you will need to be joining us with the recognisable name by which you booked your place, otherwise you won’t be admitted to the session.   If you do not yet have a zoom account, please join by following this link: https://zoom.us/freesignup/    This year there will be no charge for joining the Battle conference. The Allen Brown Committee, which has oversight of the conference, has made the decision that the Allen Brown Memorial Trust will cover the cost of the zoom account and the administrative burden of organising and putting on the conference.    We hope that by offering the conference free of charge, the Anglo-Norman community across the world will feel able to join with us in celebrating the wealth of talent that we have lined up for this year’s conference.    The Trust is an educational charity with the objective of supporting the study of the Anglo-Norman past, broadly defined. If you felt that you wished to support our endeavours with a financial contribution, please contact me. If you wish to give a sum which will ensure that a lecture is given annually in your name, then please do talk to me about it.    You may wish to note that the 2022 conference will take place (pandemic allowing) in Bonn between 21 and 26 July. More details will follow soon.

Programme :

Friday 23 July

1.30 Welcome and opening remarks by the conference director.

1.40 The Allen Brown Memorial Lecture
Professor Lindy Grant, ‘”Avalterre’ and “Affinitas Lotharingorum”: Mapping cultural production, cultural connection and political fragmentation in the ‘Grand Est’ in the High Middle Ages’
Chair: Prof. Liesbeth van Houts

2.30 Formal question time

3.00 Informal discussion time. Delegates are invited to remain to talk informally with one another before the next session starts.

3.30 Prof. Chelsea Shields-Más, ‘The sheriffs of Edward the Confessor’
Chair: Dr Chris Lewis

4.15 Formal discussion time

4.45 Informal discussion time. Delegates are invited to remain to talk informally with one another before the next session starts.

5.15 Poster Session.
As in previous years, we plan to hold a poster session. This year, we will open a number of rooms, in each one will be the person offering their poster. You’ll have 15 minutes to look at the poster and then the session will be opened up to questions. Each session will last 30 minutes, so you should be able to get to three sessions in total.

As usual, the winner of the poster session will be offered a prize. The winner will be chosen by a committee of the Trustees led by the Trust’s chair, Prof. Grant.

Saturday 24 July

1.30 The Des Seal Memorial Lecture
Dr Kathleen Thompson, ‘The Perspective from Ponthieu: Count Guy and his Norman neighbour’
Chair: The conference director

2.15 Formal question time

2.45 Informal discussion time. Delegates are invited to remain to talk informally with one another before the next session starts.

3.15 Prof Heather Tanner, ‘The Early Angevin Kings and the northern French Nobles’
Chair: Prof. Lindy Grant

4.00 Formal question time

4.30 Informal discussion time. Delegates are invited to remain to talk informally with one another before the next session starts.

5.00 Dr Leonie Hicks and Dr Michael Bintley, ‘Landscapes of concealment in the Brut narratives: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace and Layamon’.
Chair: Dr Mark Hagger

5.45 Formal question time

6.15 Informal discussion time. Delegates are invited to remain to talk informally with one another before the next session starts.

Sunday 25 July

1.30 The Marjorie Chibnall Memorial Lecture
Dr Amy Devenney, ‘Demons and Incidents of Possession in the Miracles of Norman Italy’
Chair: Prof Lindy Grant, Chair of the Allen Brown Memorial Trust.

2.15 Formal question time

2.45 Informal discussion time. Delegates are invited to remain to talk informally with one another before the next session starts.

3.15 PD Dr Christoph T. Maier, Crusaders and Jews: the York Massacre of 1190 Revisited’
Chair: the conference director

4.00 Formal question time

4.30 Informal discussion time. Delegates are invited to remain to talk informally with one another before the next session starts.

5.00 Dr Anaïs Waag, ‘Rulership, Authority, and Power in the Middle Ages: the Case of the Queen Regnant’
Chair: Prof. Heather Tanner

5.45 Formal question time

6.15 Informal discussion time. Delegates are invited to remain to talk informally with one another before the next session starts.

Monday 26 July

1.30 The Christine Mahany Memorial Lecture
Prof Rob. Liddiard, ‘Wild, Wild Horses: Equine Landscapes of the 11th and 12th centuries’
Chair: Dr Leonie Hicks

2.15 Formal question time

2.45 Informal discussion time. Delegates are invited to remain to talk informally with one another before the next session starts.

3.15 Prof. Alan Cooper, ‘Poverty in London in the 1190s: Some Possibilities’.
Chair: The conference director

4.00 Formal question time

4.30 Informal discussion time. Delegates are invited to remain to talk informally with one another.

Source : Battle Conference

In the first 150 years of European printed book production, the new medium of print evolved from its indebtedness to manuscript culture into a full-grown means of communication and articulation. It developed its own conventions and became ever more widespread, in a geographical as well as a social sense. At the same time, the development of print culture added new impulses to the dynamic relations between Latin and the vernaculars. Already in the early decades of print, commercial printers tried to cater to as large a readership as possible, including the ‘illiterate’: those who had little to no knowledge of the Latin language. While initially the majority of titles were printed in Latin, the vernaculars gained ground as languages of arts and sciences, commerce, religion, and literary expression. Reading in the vernacular could be a matter of preference or even of intellectual statement (e.g. cha mbers of rhetoric) just as well as a matter of literacy. It was at the crossroads of the readers’ specific needs and expectations, the technical possibilities of the press, and the expert knowledge and commercial interests of the printer and/or the editor(s), compositor(s), and woodcutter(s) that vernacular reading experiences took shape.

This conference explores how reading experiences were shaped both by producers and users of vernacular books. By adopting an international and interdisciplinary perspective (combining book history, literary history, art history, religious studies, and history of knowledge) during the conference and within the foreseen volume, we aim to contribute to the next step towards a comparative study of printing strategies and users’ practices in the first 150 years of printing vernacular books in Europe. Placing studies of (reader’s responses to) books in various languages and with a variety of texts (scientific, literary, religious) next to each other, we hope to reach a transregional view and an interdisciplinary interpretive framework of the early printed vernacular book. Ideally, each session will contrast the perspective of the book producers with the perception of the users.

We approach reading as an embodied, material practice that is affected both by texts and their presentation, with a particular interest in the interplay between language, form and content, and between intended and actual readers. Apart from being read attentively, books could be viewed, selectively consulted, extensively annotated, modified in a variety of ways (by adding other handwritten or printed texts, by colouring images et cetera), or used as a prop. An increasing number of studies explore how matters of layout, paratext, illustration, and language were tailored to appeal to an intended readership. Similarly, substantial scholarly attention is being paid to real users’ practices by way of analysing the traces that they left in printed books. In both strands of research, however, there are still challenges in moving from case studies towards more comparative, synthetic overviews. With respect to traces of use, their singularity is an important issue. Equally, translat ion or p resentation strategies are often signalled in studies of individual vernacular texts – or of texts in a single vernacular, or a single genre. Through its comparative and interdisciplinary outlook, this conference and the foreseen volume aim to make inroads into these challenges.

Programme : here

informations pratiques :

Wednesday 25 August 2021 – Friday 27 August 2021
Leiden University Library
Witte Singel 27
2311 BG Leiden
Room : Vossiuszaal

Source : Universiteit Leiden