Lecturer: Jeff Rider (Connecticut).
Annotation:
Guibert of Nogent (c. 1060 – c. 1125) was a northern French Benedictine monk, historian and theologian who ended his life as the abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy. His autobiographical work – De vita sua sive monodiarum suarum libri tres – is usually considered the first autobiography since Agustine’s Confessions. He was raised by his widowed mother, and his childhood, which he describes in some detail in his autobiography, seems to have been especially complex and stressful and offers us intriguing insights into family dynamics at the end of the eleventh century.
The lecture is a part of the series Me and the World … Autobiography in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Lecturer: Katherine Weikert (Winchester).
Annotation:
Who justifies the past? This lecture will examine the Encomium Emmae Reginae through the lens of biography, drawing upon an archaeological approaches to the sense of time. Through biography, the tool used by Queen Emma to attempt to control not only her own reputation but the Anglo-Scandinavian monarchs in England, this lecture will seek to illuminate how we can understand Emma, the person, as well as Emma, the political Navigator.
The lecture is a part of the series Me and the World … Autobiography in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Lecturer: Balázs Nagy (Budapest).
Annotation:
The talk will address some conceptual issues of memory and identity in the autobiography of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia. Charles who was baptized as Wenceslas had a special personal connection to his double names and in context the question of the duplicate identity will be discussed also. The autobiography exemplifies references to personal and dynastic elements of the shaping of memory. Charles himself used various means of memory to establish his own position. The talk will argue for a complex understanding of this unique text of the fourteenth century.
The lecture is a part of the series Me and the World … Autobiography in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
