Christ III CFP

Call for Papers: 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies (May
7–10, 2009)

Special Session on Christ III

Despite its brilliant images and grand rhetoric, "Christ III" is the
least studied member of the three-poem suite that opens the Exeter
Book of Old English poetry. At last year's Congress, Andy Orchard
called attention to this fact, and explored the poem's relationship
to a "Cynewulfian school" and to the poem's homiletic contexts
(including the writings of Wulfstan). And yet there is much more work
to be done.

We welcome proposals on any aspect of the poem's manuscript,
political, or intellectual contexts, on its poetic artistry and
intertextual relationships to other works both in and outside of the
Exeter Book, on its sources and analogues in Latin and Old English
literature, as well as on its sources and analogues in material
culture. Other approaches are, of course, welcome as well.

New work on "Christ III" has the potential to reshape understandings
of eschatological and penitential thought in Anglo-Saxon England, to
realign studies of Old English poetry and prose, and to shed light on
the cultural context responsible for the Exeter Book's production.

Please send an abstract with the required form (available online at
http://www.wmich.edu/~medinst/congress/submissions.html#Paper)
by September 15 to:

Brian T. O'Camb : btocamb@wisc.edu

Department of English
University of Wisconsin
7195 Helen C. White Hall
600 N. Park St.
Madison, WI 53706