Festival of Ideas, October 22‒25

One week into the new term, it's time to announce the first big ASNC event of the year. This is our now traditional involvement with the University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas, an annual exploration of the arts, humanities and social sciences where we take the opportunity to share some of our interests with the public. In keeping with this year's theme ('Curating Cambridge: our cities, our stories, our stuff'), several of the events will have a local focus.

On the evening of Wednesday 22nd October, Philip Dunshea will get things up and running with a talk, 'A tour of Cambridge and its surroundings before the University'. Dr Dunshea will try to get from London to the centre of Cambridge at the beginning of the seventh century, looking along the way at how early medieval authors wrote about the surrounding landscapes, and introducing some traces which survive out in the fields of South Cambridgeshire today. 22nd October, 6‒7 p.m., Room G-R06/07, Faculty of English, 9 West Road

Then on Saturday afternoon, Dr Debby Banham  will pick up where Dr Dunshea left off, with a Walking Tour of Early Medieval Cambridge. Dr Banham's tour comes highly recommended, and will cover some of the exciting finds archaeologists have made in Cambridge in recent years.

Saturday 25 October: 1:00pm - 3:00pm

Saturday 25 October: 1:00pm - 3:00pm

25 October, 1‒3 p.m., Meeting in Foyer of English Faculty, 9 West Road. Please wear appropriate footwear and clothing suitable for the weather!

Please wear appropriate footwear and clothing suitable for the weather. - See more at: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/walking-tour-early-medieval-cambridge#sthash.g4toabbx.dpuf

Please wear appropriate footwear and clothing suitable for the weather. - See more at: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/walking-tour-early-medieval-cambridge#sthash.g4toabbx.dpuf

On the same day, the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic will host a series of talks and interactive sessions, many of them aimed at children. These will run the whole day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., beginning and ending with some medieval story-telling performances. In between, there will be an introductions to medieval writing, the world of the vikings, crime and punishment in medieval Iceland, and the role of genealogies in the early middle ages. It looks like a rich and very entertaining programme; for full details, see the Festival of Ideas guide which you can download here.

We look forward to welcoming you to the department!

Faculty of English, 9 West Road

Meet in Foyer of English Faculty Building, 9 West Road, CB3 9DP - See more at: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/walking-tour-early-medieval-cambridge#sthash.JJzme3oT.dpuf

Meet in Foyer of English Faculty Building, 9 West Road, CB3 9DP - See more at: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/walking-tour-early-medieval-cambridge#sthash.JJzme3oT.dpuf

Saturday 25 October: 1:00pm - 3:00pm

Saturday 25 October: 1:00pm - 3:00pm

Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC

Dr Elizabeth Boyle writes:

The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic continues to be very proud of its association with the Sutton Trust, a philanthropic organisation which seeks to promote social mobility through education. Each year we host a Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC for a small group of talented young people, from non-privileged backgrounds, who are about to begin their final year of school. The purpose of the Summer School is to allow them to experience university life, attending a range of lectures, seminars and classes on all aspects of the ASNC undergraduate course: from Anglo-Saxon history to Old Norse literature, from palaeography to medieval Welsh law. This year we welcomed eleven teenagers from a wide geographical area, including students from Wales, Yorkshire and London, all of whom were bright, enthusiastic and willing to sacrifice a week of their summer holiday in order to learn about all things medieval.

The Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC, 2012

One of the highlights of the Summer School, as ever, was the afternoon spent in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College. The Parker sub-librarian, Dr Suzanne Paul, introduced the students to the Parker collection, and then the students spent an hour preparing presentations on manuscripts including the Parker Chronicle and the Old English Bede. After giving their presentations, the students had the opportunity to study the manuscripts in detail, as well as looking at other important items from the collection.

Admiring medieval manuscripts in the Parker Library

In Old Court, Corpus Christi College

 

Participants also had the opportunity to experience a supervision, the small-group teaching which is characteristic of Oxford and Cambridge. Each of them had chosen the topic in which they were most interested, and were supervised individually or in pairs by doctoral students and early career researchers in the ASNC department.

 

Finding Anglo-Saxon things to stand in front of ...

 

During the Summer School the students stayed at St John's College, and were able to indulge in typical Cambridge activities, such as punting on the river and attending a 'formal hall' dinner. We hope very much that this week will inspire them to apply to elite universities, such as Cambridge, for their undergraduate studies.

The grown-ups (allegedly): Ollie (residential supervisor), Becky (CAMbassador and ASNC graduate), and Lizzie (academic co-ordinator of the Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC)

And, despite the fact that most of the students had never studied a word of Latin before they arrived on the course, the expert teaching of Dr Rosalind Love ensured that, by the time of the disco on the last night of the Summer School, they were all able to get into trouble for swearing profusely in Insular Latin. No matter what the participants go on to do in life, that is one invaluable skill which will always stay with them.

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.