ICMS Kalamazoo 2022
Sponsored By: English Association Special Interest Group in Manuscript Studies
Recent scholarship on trauma in medieval texts has focused on structural and stylistic features as traces of trauma, influenced by wider trauma theory and its emphasis on fragmented, anti-narrative forms as reflections of the psychic experience of trauma. But what might this approach be missing? How might such methodologies risk eliding important differences between the Middle Ages and today? These two panels ask how special attention to medieval conceptualizations and representations of trauma might helpfully expand the boundaries of what we consider "trauma literature." How can close engagement with medieval texts, on their own terms, nuance, extend and even reshape aspects of contemporary trauma theory? How might medieval literatures helpfully expand the edges of what we consider "testimony"? Can textual features such as repetition or metaphor operate differently in genres such as the medieval sermon or chronicle? What can medieval conceptualizations of victim, perpetrators, and implicated subjects tell us about the (in)appropriateness of these contemporary categories?
CONTACT: Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words to Matthew Aiello ([email protected]) + Professor Catherine Clarke ([email protected]) by September 1st
