The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past

Dr David Woodman and Dr Martin Brett are hosting a two-day conference on 29th - 30th March on 'The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past' at Robinson College, Cambridge, in association with the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, and the British Academy. Registration is £20, and details on how to register can be found here. The programme is:

Tuesday 29th March
10.15 – Registration and Coffee
11.00 – Welcome

Session I: The Anglo-Saxon Saints
Chair: Prof. N. Brooks
11.10: Dr R.C. Love: ‘Folcard of Saint-Bertin and the Anglo-Saxon Saints at Thorney’
11.50: Prof. R. Bartlett: ‘The Viking Hiatus in the Cult of Saints as seen in the Twelfth Century’

12.45 – Lunch in Robinson College

Session II: Anglo-Saxon England in the Narrative of Britain
Chair: Dr M. Brett
14.00: Dr J. Barrow: ‘Danish Ferocity and Abandoned Monasteries: the Twelfth-century View’
14.40: Prof. D.W. Rollason: ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de regibus as a Product of Twelfth-century Historical Workshops’
15.20: Dr H. Doherty: ‘The Twelfth-Century Laymen and the English Past’

16.00 – Tea and Coffee

16.30: Prof. J. Gillingham, ‘Some Late Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’
17.10: Prof. R.M. Thomson: ‘William of Malmesbury's Unknown anti-Norman Diatribe’

End: 17.50

Wednesday 30th March

Session III: Anglo-Saxon Law and Charter
Chair: Prof. S. Keynes
09.30: Prof. N. Vincent: ‘The Use and Abuse of the Anglo-Saxon Past: The Royal Charter Evidence’
10.10: Dr S. Baxter - title to be confirmed

10.50 - Tea and Coffee

11.30: Prof. N. Brooks: ‘Was there a “Textus Cantuariensis” and what did it contain?’
12.10: Prof. B. O’Brien: ‘Anglo-Saxon Law-Makers and their Laws in the Twelfth Century’

12.45 – Lunch in Robinson College

Session IV: Scribes, Artists and the French Vernacular
Chair: Prof. M. Lapidge
14.00: Dr J. Crick, ‘Norman Imitation of Pre-Conquest English Script: Possibilities and Limitations’
14.40: Prof C. Karkov: ‘The Scribe Looks Back: Anglo-Saxon England and the Eadwine Psalter’

15.20 - Tea and Coffee

15.50: Dr T. Webber: ‘Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and Office Readings in Post-Conquest England’
16.30: Dr J.E. Weiss: ‘The Anglo-Saxons and the Anglo-Normans: “History” in Anglo-Norman Romance’

End 17.10

Another ASNC awarded Junior Research Fellowship!

Congratulations to Dr Deborah Hayden, who has just been elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ Church, Oxford, beginning in October 2011, to work on the medieval Irish poetico-grammatical treatise Auraicept na nÉces.

Deborah outlines her proposed research project here:

I will spend the next three years working on a manuscript study of the Irish treatise on linguistic and poetic theory entitled Auraicept na nÉces, ‘The Scholars’ Primer’, which has long been recognised as a valuable source for the study of literary and intellectual life in medieval Ireland. The Auraicept consists of a concise core of text, possibly datable to as early as the eighth century, to which a copious amount of commentary was subsequently added; the abundance of this commentary testifies to the considerable popularity of the work amongst medieval Irish scholars over an extended period. The Auraicept represents one of the earliest sustained attempts in Western grammatical tradition to contrast a classical language with a vernacular one, as it weaves native terminology, ideas and allusions into a structural framework heavily influenced by classical doctrine on grammar and rhetoric. The work’s commentators drew upon a range of different sources, revealing not only what they perceived to be of importance in the study of their language, but also how they articulated the relationships between linguistic theory, rhetorical practice and literary authority. Recent scholarship has begun to re-evaluate the Auraicept’s seminal role in Latin and vernacular learning in medieval Ireland, its contribution to our understanding of medieval literary genre, and the light it sheds on Ireland’s engagements with continental Europe in the medieval period. However, several manuscript copies of the treatise have still not been comprehensively examined, and it is the aim of my project to fulfil the need for an in-depth and up-to-date study of the Auraicept’s manuscript transmission, including further research into the nature and sources of its accreted scholia.

Parker Library blog and CCASNC

Two notices which may be of interest:

First, the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, now has a blog, which you can find here.

Second, the 2011 Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, which is organised by postgraduate students in the Department of ASNC, will be held on 26th February. This year's theme is 'Colliding Worlds', and the Colloquium will feature two keynote lectures: Prof Malcolm Godden, Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford, who will be speaking on 'Old English Orosius and its sources' and Dr. Paul Russell, Reader in Celtic, University of Cambridge, who will be speaking on 'Revisiting the "Welsh Dictator" of the Old English Orosius'. The full programme, along with details of how to register, can be found here.