Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lecture 2012

The 2012 Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lecture will be delivered by:

Dr Alex Woolf

(University of St Andrews)

on the subject of:

'The Churches of Pictavia'

Monday 30th April, 5.45pm

The Pavilion Room, Hughes Hall, Cambridge

All welcome. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.    

Round-up of recent awards in ASNC

The Leverhulme Trust has made a grant to the Department for an international network entitled ‘Converting the Isles: Conversion to Christianity in the Insular World’. Máire Ní Mhaonaigh will serve as Principal Investigator for the grant, working in collaboration with her co-applicant, Roy Flechner. A Network Facilitator for the grant will be appointed in due course. A colloquium on one aspect of the theme will be held on 12 May in the Department; for further details click here.

Megan Cavell, who has just completed her PhD in ASNC on Old English literature, has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto.

Denis Casey has been awarded a fellowship by the European Institutes for Advanced Study (EURIAS) international researcher mobility programme. He will hold his fellowship at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies during 2012-13, conducting research on ‘The intellectual world of Conall Mag Eochagáin: the medieval and early modern contexts of the Annals of Clonmacnoise’.

Congratulations to all concerned!

ASNC on Youtube

Just in case you're still wondering what we're all about:

 

Obituaries

Ray Page: obituaries published in the Daily Telegraph (22nd March) and The Times (23rd March) have celebrated the career of Prof. Ray Page. The link to the Telegraph obituary is here; the Times obituary can only be accessed by subscribers.

Ursula Donke: sadly, another eminent Cambridge-based medievalist has passed away in recent weeks, namely Ursula Dronke, the distinguished scholar of Old Norse literature. An obituary, published in the Guardian, can be found here.

Professor Ray Page (1924 - 2012)

The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic is sad to announce the death on 10 March 2012 of Professor Raymond Page, Emeritus Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge, and Fellow and former Librarian of Corpus Christi College.

 
Born in 1924, Professor Page was an assistant lecturer at the University of Nottingham, where he also undertook his doctoral studies, and he came to Cambridge in the 1960s. He became Fellow and Librarian of Corpus Christi College, and was for many years Lecturer and then Reader in Old Norse language and literature in the Department of ASNC.

From 1984 until his retirement in 1991 he was Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon. He will be fondly remembered by many for his teaching of Old Norse and of Scandinavian history in the Viking Age, and as the ‘silver-haired librarian’ of Corpus. His funeral will take place in the chapel of Corpus Christi College on Thursday 22 March at 2 p.m.

H. M. Chadwick memorial lecture 2012

The twenty-third annual H. M. Chadwick Memorial Lecture will be delivered by:

Professor Michael Lapidge

Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge

on the subject of:

'H. M. Chadwick: A Centennial Commemoration'

  

The lecture will take place on Thursday 15th March at 5.00pm, in The Riley Auditorium, Gillespie Building (off Memorial Court), Clare College, Cambridge (please note the change of venue from previous years). All welcome. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in Clare College.

Sin and Filth

Dr Debby Banham writes:

Congratulations to ASNC alumna Martha Bayless on the publication of her book, Sin and Filth in Medieval Culture: The Devil in the Latrine. This book represents the culmination of a major research project into concepts of bodily corruption in the middle ages, which has taken Prof. Bayless into some of the most obscure recesses of medieval culture. Among many anecdotes collected in the course of the project, probably the incident most dear to ASNC hearts will be the man possessed by the Devil, who farted at the relics of Aldhelm. Why else would anyone do that? In fact, this is an instance of a fairly common motif of people farting at the relics of saints, and needless to say, it did them no good. To find out more, buy the book!

The relevance of the book's subtitle is brought home by an incident in Ekkehard of St Gall's Casus Sancti Galli. Ekkehart relates how Ruodman, the abbot of the nearby monastery of Reichenau (972-986), attempted to catch the monks of St. Gall in the commission of sin by sneaking in the monastery late at night and hiding in the latrines. One of the monks heard him and woke others, and they processed to the latrine and scornfully offered him a lantern and a twist of straw - the two items necessary for legitimate use of the latrine. Anecdotes like these are set in the context of medieval thinking about dirt, contamination and decay, both physical and spiritual.

Here is what the publishers say about the book:

This important new contribution to the history of the body analyzes the role of filth as the material counterpart of sin in medieval thought. Using a wide range of texts, including theology, historical documents, and literature from Augustine to Chaucer, the book shows how filth was regarded as fundamental to an understanding of human history. This theological significance explains the prominence of filth and dung in all genres of medieval writing: there is more dung in theology than there is in Chaucer. The author also demonstrates the ways in which the religious understanding of filth and sin influenced the secular world, from town planning to the execution of traitors. As part of this investigation the book looks at the symbolic order of the body and the ways in which the different aspects of the body were assigned moral meanings. The book also lays out the realities of medieval sanitation, providing the first comprehensive view of real- life attempts to cope with filth. This book will be essential reading for those interested in medieval religious thought, literature, amd social history. Filled with a wealth of entertaining examples, it will also appeal to those who simply want to glimpse the medieval world as it really was.

Seachtain na Gaeilge, Cambridge, 5 - 17 March 2012

Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson announces a series of public events, exhibitions and lectures, celebrating Irish in Cambridge:

5 MARCH (Monday, 5pm):  Irish Poetry Reading, Biddy Jenkinson

Seachtain na Gaeilge will open with a reading by the Irish poet Biddy Jenkinson, who has been praised by Professor Ciaran Carson (Queen’s College, Belfast) as ‘one of [Ireland’s] greatest writers in any language’. Ms Jenkinson will introduce the background and content of each poem in English.  The poems will be read in Irish.  The Poetry Reading will take place in the English Faculty (9 West Road) in Room G-R05.  A wine reception will follow in the ASNC Common Room.  The reading is free of charge and open to students, staff and the general public.

Biddy Jenkinson brings a distinctive style and purpose to her writing, and her highly regarded collections of verse include Baisteadh Gintlí (1987), Uiscí Beatha (1988), Dán na hUidhre (1991), An Grá Riabhach (1999), Mis (2001), Rogha Dánta (2000) and Oíche Bhealtaine (2005).  She is also the author of prose works, including An tAthair Pádraig Ó Duinnín—Bleachtaire (2008).  

8 MARCH (Thursday, 5.30pm):  Dánta agus Ceol ‘Poems and Music’ / Irish films

Modern Irish language students will present Irish poems and traditional Irish songs in the ASNC Common Room (2nd floor, English Faculty, West Road). 

The performance will be followed by a showing of the short Irish film Lipservice and the RTE documentary Oileán Eile ‘Another Island’ (1985), which presents the literary and cultural legacy of the Great Blasket Islands through archive footage of daily life, an examination of the island autobiographies (Tomás Ó Criomhthainn’s An tOileánach and The Autobiography of Peig Sayers) and accounts by well-known scholars who visited the island, including Robin Flower, Carl Marstrander, Kenneth Jackson and George Thompson.

 The Blasket Islands

13 MARCH (Tuesday, 1-3pm):  Exhibition of Irish and Irish related manuscripts, Parker Library, Corpus Christi College (*Registration required)

More than thirty items of Irish interest from the Parker Library’s world renowned collection will be on display. Students, staff and members of the public are invited to register for a guided viewing of these exquisite examples of Irish insular art, decorated initials, glossaries, saints’ lives, prophesies, chronicles and charters dating from the 8th to the 16th century.  Highlights of the exhibit include the Hymn on St. Patrick attributed to Saint Secundias (Seachnall) or Saint Colmán Elo, the only extant copy of the canons of the ‘First Synod of Patrick’, the first European description of a giraffe (written by an Irish monk!), one of the earliest maps of Ireland, and the first printed piece of Irish anywhere in the world: the bardic poem Tuar feirge foighide Dé, composed by Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn in 1571. Two tours (1-2pm and 2-3pm) will be conducted on 13 March.  To register please contact Dr Denis Casey: dc399@cam.ac.uk. 

The Parker Library exhibit has been organized by Dr Denis Casey, Teaching Associate in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic and Postdoctoral Fellow of the Society for Renaissance Studies, and Dr Christopher de Hamel, Donnelly Fellow Librarian at the ParkerLibrary

The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

picture courtesy of the Parker librarians

15 MARCH (Thursday, 5pm):  Public Lecture: 'H.M. Chadwick: A Centennial Commemoration'

Professor Michael Lapidge, Fellow of Clare College, will deliver the 23rd Annual H. M. Chadwick Memorial Lecture in the Riley Auditorium, Gillespie Building (off Memorial Court), Clare College, Queen's Road, Cambridge.  The lecture will be followed by a reception in Clare College at 6pm.

AHRC awards money for skills training in Viking Studies

The Arts & Humanities Research Council has awarded a grant of £45,000 to the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham and the Highlands and Islands for a skills training programme for PhD students and Early Career Researchers in the field of  Old Norse-Icelandic and Viking Studies: Extending Academic Research about the Viking Diaspora and its Heritage in the British Isles.

This project addresses the skills gap in the AHRC's strategic area of Heritage and engages with the emerging theme of Translating Cultures. It comprises a preparatory workshop bringing together academics, young scholars and heritage professionals, followed by a field school in Orkney, providing hands-on experience of a heritage landscape.

Call for Papers: Transmission, Translation and Dissemination in the European Middle Ages, 1000 - 1500

Closing date for proposals: 31st March 2012

Transmission, Translation and Dissemination in the European Middle Ages, 1000–1500 AD
University College Cork, Ireland
28th – 29th September 2012

The Forum for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Ireland, in association with Dr Elizabeth Boyle, University of Cambridge, are delighted to announce a forthcoming conference. 

Transmission, Translation and Dissemination in the European Middle Ages, 1000–1500 AD, is an interdisciplinary, international, two-day conference to be held at University College Cork on 28–29 September 2012. This conference will explore the issues of textual transmission and the movement of ideas across medieval Europe. Indeed, going beyond consideration of literary texts alone, the scope of discussions will include the transmission of images, music, scientific learning, and related areas.

Keynote addresses will be given by Dr Caoimhín Breatnach, School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics, University College Dublin, on the transmission of Latin religious texts in Ireland c. 1000 - 1500; and Dr Anthony Lappin, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, University of Manchester, on Alchoran latinus and growing knowledge of Islam in the twelfth century.

Proposals (max. 250 words) are welcome from researchers in all areas of medieval studies. Papers should last c. 30 minutes (plus time for questions and discussion). We also welcome proposals from postgraduate students for shorter papers (c. 20 minutes plus questions). A small number of postgraduate bursaries may be available.

Proposals for papers should be emailed to: medrenforum@gmail.com no later than 31 March 2012. Registration details to follow. The call for papers is available as a PDF at this link.

This conference is being organised by the Forum for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Ireland in association with University College Cork and the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge. The conference is generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust, the School of History, and the School of English, University College Cork.

Organizing committee:
Dr Elizabeth Boyle (University of Cambridge)
Dr Ann Buckley (Trinity College Dublin)
Dr Carrie Griffin (Queen Mary, University of London / University College Cork)
Ms Emer Purcell M.Phil. (University College Cork)