Rethinking Medium, Message, and Material

Organizers

Heather Maring, Martin Foys

session information

Medieval practices of reading, writing, singing, oral-traditional and musical composition, and other artistic endeavors arguably took place in aurally rich environments that influenced their production, form, and reception. This seminar invites papers and presentations that attend to such material and sensorial factors in early medieval texts and other artifacts, with a particular interest in their critical interpretation and/or scholarly editing.

We are especially interested in how poetic, linguistic, and material features may have informed these artifacts. How, for instance, do interpretations shift when considering the roles of oral-literate poetics, silence, local bird song, liturgical practices, dialectical, phonological or metrical variation or other auditory forms? How can editorial practices incorporate insights on aural influences or attend more precisely to the dynamics of grammar, language, and poetics? We especially encourage papers that bring into conversation early medieval language(s), grammar, oral-literate poetics, reading practices, scribal practices, sensory studies, editorial methodologies, or material culture. 

This seminar will consist of (1) a closed session for privately workshopping pre-circulated papers or presentations and (2) an open session for sharing research presentations with interested conference attendees.

Any questions can be directed to Heather Maring, heather.maring@asu.edu, and Martin Foys, foys@wisc.edu.