Leeds IMC 2015 - panel on affection - CFP
Sep. 1st, 2014 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricElusive affection: Proposed session for Leeds IMC2015 July 6-9
Organisers: Amy Brown (Université de Genève,![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
amisamileandme), Regan Eby (Boston College)
Call for Papers (two speakers sought)
Deadline for abstract submission: 20th September
Send abstracts to: amy.brown@unige.ch (will be forwarded to Regan Eby from there)
What is affection? Can we reliably locate or describe the features of affection between medieval persons, real or fictional?
Love of God, romantic love, and love between monastic peers or loyal knights: these and other kinds of love are well attested across the range of medieval sources and periods, but historians of friendship recognise the difficulty of bridging the gap between felt affection and the literary tropes of love. Love might be spoken or written of in situations where the parties were unlikely to feel positively toward one another, such as in reconciliations and peace treaties. In other cases, sources might borrow from the scripts of romance, friendship at court, or family in order to characterise a peculiar relationship, such as an opposite-sex friendship. Some forms of affection might be indicated without reference to the vocabulary of love at all.
We invite medievalists from any period or discipline to propose a paper relating to the history of affection, unconventional affectionate bonds, or approaches to situations in which we have insufficient data for firm conclusions concerning the presence or absence of affection in lived experience. The abstract for Amy Brown’s paper (focusing on 14th c english romance) is below, and we would particularly like to complement this paper with evidence from other periods or other literary traditions.
Sir Lancelot in the Friend Zone: strategies for offering and limiting affection in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur
Amy Brown, Université de Genève
In erthe is nothing that shall me let
To be thy knight loud and still
This promise appears in the Middle English Stanzaic Morte Arthur not as a proposition to a beloved, but as Lancelot’s counter-offer in rejecting the Maid of Astolat’s romantic desires toward him. This text features a negotiation sequence, not found in other versions of the Astolat narrative, in which Lancelot and the Maid attempt to articulate the terms of a relationship which is both like and unlike that of romantic love.
This paper aims will do two things: firstly, to set out the history of the concept of affection (linguistically distinct from the 12th c) and its overlap with medieval ideas of love. Secondly, to read the Maid of Astolat segment of the Stanzaic Morte as an instance in which comparison and analogy with familiar relationship types is used to establish affection at the core of an unconventional bond, that of opposite-sex friendship.
Final note, especially since Amy intends to distribute this CFP to swiss colleagues: proposals for papers in English preferred, but we enthusiastically endorse the idea of panelists (esp. early career researchers) unaccustomed to working in English. Amy can volunteer moral support and/or editing assistance if helpful, and we will aim to moderate questions with opportunity for clarifications and translations as needed.
Organisers: Amy Brown (Université de Genève,
Call for Papers (two speakers sought)
Deadline for abstract submission: 20th September
Send abstracts to: amy.brown@unige.ch (will be forwarded to Regan Eby from there)
What is affection? Can we reliably locate or describe the features of affection between medieval persons, real or fictional?
Love of God, romantic love, and love between monastic peers or loyal knights: these and other kinds of love are well attested across the range of medieval sources and periods, but historians of friendship recognise the difficulty of bridging the gap between felt affection and the literary tropes of love. Love might be spoken or written of in situations where the parties were unlikely to feel positively toward one another, such as in reconciliations and peace treaties. In other cases, sources might borrow from the scripts of romance, friendship at court, or family in order to characterise a peculiar relationship, such as an opposite-sex friendship. Some forms of affection might be indicated without reference to the vocabulary of love at all.
We invite medievalists from any period or discipline to propose a paper relating to the history of affection, unconventional affectionate bonds, or approaches to situations in which we have insufficient data for firm conclusions concerning the presence or absence of affection in lived experience. The abstract for Amy Brown’s paper (focusing on 14th c english romance) is below, and we would particularly like to complement this paper with evidence from other periods or other literary traditions.
Sir Lancelot in the Friend Zone: strategies for offering and limiting affection in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur
Amy Brown, Université de Genève
In erthe is nothing that shall me let
To be thy knight loud and still
This promise appears in the Middle English Stanzaic Morte Arthur not as a proposition to a beloved, but as Lancelot’s counter-offer in rejecting the Maid of Astolat’s romantic desires toward him. This text features a negotiation sequence, not found in other versions of the Astolat narrative, in which Lancelot and the Maid attempt to articulate the terms of a relationship which is both like and unlike that of romantic love.
This paper aims will do two things: firstly, to set out the history of the concept of affection (linguistically distinct from the 12th c) and its overlap with medieval ideas of love. Secondly, to read the Maid of Astolat segment of the Stanzaic Morte as an instance in which comparison and analogy with familiar relationship types is used to establish affection at the core of an unconventional bond, that of opposite-sex friendship.
Final note, especially since Amy intends to distribute this CFP to swiss colleagues: proposals for papers in English preferred, but we enthusiastically endorse the idea of panelists (esp. early career researchers) unaccustomed to working in English. Amy can volunteer moral support and/or editing assistance if helpful, and we will aim to moderate questions with opportunity for clarifications and translations as needed.