Early Middle English Society

The Early Middle English Society, which seeks to promote the study and
scholarly discussion of English literary and cultural production from the
late twelfth century to the mid-fourteenth century, is sponsoring two
sessions at the seventeenth International Medieval Congress in Leeds,
12-15 July 2010.



Session one: Travel and Exploration in Early Middle English Texts

Abstracts are invited for papers dealing with descriptions of travel,
exploration, migration and/or conquest in Early Middle English texts, and
with relations between such texts and travel accounts in other texts.

Possible subjects may include, but are not limited to:
• Descriptions of travel, origins, discovery, conquest
• Relations between texts and maps
• Relations between narrative texts and travel accounts
• Geography and ethnography
• Utopian and/or dystopian narrative
• Texts written by travellers or migrants
• Texts as sources of information for travellers
• Awareness of linguistic consequences of travel



Session two: The Travelling Manuscript in Early Middle English

Abstracts are invited for papers dealing with the idea of travel in
relation to the study of manuscripts of the Early Middle English period.

Possible subjects may include, but are not limited to:
• Manuscripts which bring together texts with an interest in travel,
geography, ethnography and/or conquest
• Texts which "travel together", appearing as a corpus in various
manuscript contexts
• Travel (e.g., geographically, socially) of manuscripts
• Travel (e.g., geographically, socially) of individual texts in the
manuscript tradition
• Conversely, manuscripts which in their presentation of texts preclude
the possibility of a text's travel between different environments
• Diachronic travel of texts: OE texts into the Early Middle English
period, and Early Middle English texts after ca. 1350
• Multilingual contexts of the reception of Early Middle English, and the
exploration of linguistic differences



We particularly, but by no means exclusively, welcome papers with
interdisciplinary and/or diachronic approaches, papers that deal with
several texts in relation to each other, and papers that reach beyond the
conventional chronological, linguistic and geographical borders of Early
Middle English studies.

Please send proposals for twenty-minute papers (title and an abstract of
about 250-300 words, with a short bibliography) by e-mail to Sjoerd Levelt
(s.levelt {at} seh.oxon.org) by September 6, 2009. Inquiries are welcome.