Thursday, July 18, 2019

CALL FOR PAPERS
“Reassessing the Matter of the Greenwood”
Sponsored Session of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)
International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 7-10, 2020
Historian Maurice Keen’s study The Outlaws of Medieval Legend, first published in 1961, remains a significant contribution to outlaw studies. After noticing a number of shared themes, motifs, and styles in medieval outlaw narratives, Keen argued for a new fourth “matter” to join those of Britain, France, and Troy: the greenwood. It is time for a reassessment of his contribution. What are the significant characteristics of a text needed to classify it as a greenwood matter? Can medieval outlaw works exist as hybrid matters? How can we account for matters of the greenwood outside of medieval Western Europe? The papers in this session will examine verse and prose literary texts from the Middle Ages, and scholars are encouraged to think critically about genre and generic markers, the transmission of texts into various literary, cultural, and historical environments, and how shared textual characteristics formulate traditions.
Please send 250-word abstracts and a completed Participant Information Form (PIF) by September 15, 2019, to Alex Kaufman: alkaufman@bsu.edu.

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