In line with the special thematic strand of the International Medieval Congress 2019, Borders, and within the sub-strand Disciplinary Boundaries, we are seeking papers for a series of sessions entitled “Borders of Reception: Medieval Norse literature and Nation Building.”
In past decades, medievalism and reception studies have been areas of intensive enquiry across disciplines and periods. Until quite recently, medievalism has been foremost associated with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when, in Europe and North America, travellers, antiquarians, and poets looked back on the Middle Ages to conceptualise their own regional or national identities. However, the appeal of the European Middle Ages as a moment in which fledgling ‘nationalisms’ took shape existed before and after this period of romantic nationalism. These sessions aim to produce deeper insights into how we conceptualise ‘reception’ and its borders with ‘reinvention’, acknowledging that this nebulous term entails, at all times, the remembering, creating, reimagining and repurposing of a period of European history. The proposed sessions will bring together scholars working in diverse fields of medieval studies whose research relates to receptions of the past - broadly conceived - in their historical and cultural contexts and will explore which activities can be seen as direct reception of medieval texts and artefacts and which seem to be second or third hand appropriation of the past.
We particularly welcome contributions on the reception of Old Norse literature and culture, but also other contributions on how narrations about the Middle Ages have been used in identity formation of modern states are invited to contribute. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches and invite papers exploring especially the following topics:
Definitions of ‘Reception’ and Disciplinary Boundaries
The Making and Remaking of the Norse Middle Ages after the Middle Ages
Reception of the Middle Ages and Nation(s) Building
Medievalism and Travel to Iceland (Antiquarian to Modern)
Old Norse, Medievalism and Early Modern Scholarship (Linguistics & Historiography)
Please send a 250-word proposal including 5 keywords to Katarzyna Anna Kapitan (kak at dnm.dk) or Dale Kedwards (dale at hi.is) by 15th September 2019.