Lecturer: Carolyne Larrington (Oxford).
Annotation:
This lecture will talk about some of the ways in which the poetic form of ‚ævidrápur‘ (deeds of a life) functions within the fornaldarsaga genre in Old Norse. These autobiographically styled poems look back over and reflect a little on the lives of the Viking ancestors of medieval Scandinavians. Some may indeed draw on ancient traditions, others be antiquarian re-imaginings, but their focus on violence, loss, regret – and even love – allows us draw parallels with other kinds of autobiographical composition.
The lecture is a part of the series Me and the World … Autobiography in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Lecturer: Jan Hon (Berkeley).
Annotation:
Henry Suso’s Vita narrates the life of a „Servant of Eternal Wisdom“ as a path from the state of sin to the state of „Gelassenheit“ (composure/serenity/“let-it-be-ness“) and unity with God. What makes this text unique even in the context of late medieval mysticism is its autobiographical impetus. Though narrated in the third person, the text uses a number of strategies to link the narrative to the historical figure of Henry Suso. That, in turn, makes the hagiographical tone of the account a notably risky endeavor: how can one authorize his own life, filled with self-induced suffering, as an imitatio Christi and, at the same time, present it as an example to be followed by others? The talk will discuss this tension between hagio-graphy and auto-bio-graphy along with the medial strategies in both the manuscript and the print transmissions employed to provide the audience with spiritual participation in the servant’s (self-)torturous way to God.
The lecture is a part of the series Me and the World … Autobiography in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Lecturer: Laura Elisabeth Kalas Williams (Swansea).
Annotation:
The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1440) is widely considered to be the first known female autobiography in the English Language. Dictated to a number of scribes over her lifetime, the Book narrates Margery Kempe’s (b.1373; d.c.1440) spiritual conversion and her sometimes painful journey towards a holy life. This lecture will reveal the contents of a medicinal recipe that was added to the end of the only surviving manuscript by a late-fifteenth-century reader of the Book, and will explore the significance of such a medical-religious dialogue. The lecture will also consider the broader use of the Christus Medicus (Christ the Physician) motif, and the ways in which Kempe utilises such medieval understandings to achieve union with God.
The lecture is a part of the series Me and the World … Autobiography in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Lecurer: Pernille Hermann (Aarhus).
Annotation:
Leonora Christina (1621-1698), the daugther of the Danish king Christian IV, spent more than two decades in prison, accused of being the accomplice of her husband, Corfitz Ulfeldt, whom was killed for high treason. From this experience grew a most fascinating autobiography, with high narrative quality and an immensely high amount of details from everyday life in prison. The lecture will introduce to Leonora Christina’s autobiographical works, it will discuss how this highborn 17th-century women created the image of a strong and righteous heroine, and how she renewed the autobiographical genre by establishing new textual dialogues. The autobiography of Leonora Christina Ulfeldt is translated into English in Memoirs of Leonora Christina (transl. F.E. Bunnett) London 1872.
The lecture is a part of the series Me and the World … Autobiography in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Lecturer: Ryan Szpiech (Michigan).
Annotation:
In this lecture, I will discuss the first-person accounts of various medieval religious converts including Hermann the Jew, Abner of Burgos, and Anselm Turmeda. I will consider how the basic form of a conversion story—from Paul and Augustine to Bunyon, Rousseau, and Joyce—lends itself to narrative drama, suggesting that autobiography is not just a portrait of the self, but a story of the self’s transformation.
The lecture is a part of the series Me and the World … Autobiography in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Lecturer: Petr Kučera (Hamburg).
Annotation:
It has been assumed by scholars that, in the Ottoman world, autobiographies were extremely rare due to the collectivist nature of the Ottoman-Islamic culture where adherence to a fixed canon of narrative instruments and a strict separation between the public and the private formed an obstacle to the individualistic expression of the Self. This lecture will show that it is rather our fixation on certain genres that hinders us to see autobiographical traits in texts that usually do not fit the category “autobiography”. Furthermore, it will offer an analysis of one of the most famous Ottoman-Turkish autobiographical works, Osman Ağa’s fascinating account of his captivity in Austria and his subsequent carrier as interpreter and diplomat for the Imperial Court (written 1724-1725).
The lecture is a part of the series Me and the World … Autobiography in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Lecturer: Stephan Guth (Oslo)
Annotation:
Based on selected sample texts, the lecture seeks to give a brief overview over the most prominent types of Arab(ic) autobiographical writing in the premodern period, not however without profiling these against later developments. A central question will be the perception of the self and its role in the world.
The lecture is a part of the series Me and the World … Autobiography in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
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.