Science, Magic and Technology
Biennial London Chaucer Conference
10-11 July 2015
Institute of English Studies, Senate House, London
Generously supported by the New Chaucer Society and by Boydell & Brewer
Registration fees: Standard fee: £65; IES students/members concessionary fee: £45
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
PROGRAMME
Friday 10 July
09.30- 10.00: Registration
10.00 -11.30: 3-paper sessions
1. Nature
• Kellie Robertson (University of Maryland):
Speaking in Nature’s Voice
• Andrew Higl (Winona State University):
The Nature of Nature in the Parliament of Fowls
• Karen Gross (Lewis and Clark College):
The Science of the End: The Use of Anglo-Norman Apocalypses in Medieval Reference Works
2. Science: patronage and communication
• Hilary Carey (Bristol):
Eleanor Cobham, Duke Humfrey and the Patronage of Science and Medicine
• Seb Falk (University of Cambridge):
“I wel wot it is figured boistosly”: didactic writing in the Equatorie of the Planetis
• Elly Truitt (Bryn Mawr):
“I n’am but a lewd compilator:” Translatio and Scientific Knowledge in Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe
11.30 -12.00:Refreshments
12.00 -13.30: 3-paper sessions
3. Theories of Knowledge
• Anke Bernau (University of Manchester):
‘Crafty and Curious’: Seeking the Boundaries of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages
• David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania):
in limine
• Bernhard Hollick (University of Cologne):
Ovidian Psychology: Poetry, Literary Criticism, and Science in 14th Century England
4. Astrology and Divination
• Anne Mathers-Lawrence (University of Reading):
The weather and the stars: astro-meteorology in late medieval England
• Jo Edge (Cambridge):
Chaucer’s poure scoler, the quadrivial curriculum and the ‘Sphere of Life and Death’
• Clare Fletcher (Trinity College Dublin):
'Al is thurgh constellacion': Planetary Influence in John Gower's Confessio Amantis
5. Psychology and Literature
• Megan Leitch (Cardiff University):
Ricardian Dream Visions and the Science of Sleep
• Connie Bubash (Pennsylvania State University):
Poetics of the Plague: Melancholia and Prescriptive Reading in The Book of the Duchess
• Alastair Bennett (Royal Holloway):
The Franklin’s Tale and the technology of consolation
13.30 -14.30:Lunch
14.30 -16.30: 4-paper session
6. Elemental
• Hetta Howes (Queen Mary, University of London):
‘April with his shoures soote’:
Watery Tropes in Late Medieval Literature’
• Stephanie Trigg (University of Melbourne)
‘Þe borȝ brittened and brent to brondeȝ
and askez’: The City on Fire in Middle English Literature
• Sophia Wilson (King’s College London)
‘Nothinge is fix but earth alon’: The
Uncertainty of Earth and Anxiety of Animacy
• Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (George Washington University):
Heavy Atmosphere
7. Medical Narratives and Images
• Marion Turner (University of Oxford):
Illness and the Limits of Narrative: Arderne, Hoccleve, and Chaucer
• Peter Murray Jones (King’s College Cambridge):
Medicine and narrative in the later Middle Ages
• Sarah Griffin (University of Oxford):
Ordering the Internal Body: Constructing the organ diagrams of an English thirteenth-century medical compendium
• Lea Olsan (University of Louisiana at Monroe):
Artists’ recipes and medical remedies: useful knowledge in Cambridge University Library MS Dd.5.76
16.30-17.00: Refreshments
17.00 -18.00: Sponsored by the New Chaucer Society
Plenary 1:
Allan Mitchell (University of Victoria)
'Chaucer’s Translation Machine, or, Astrolabes and Augmented Bodies of Science'
18.00 Reception
Saturday 11 July
09.00- 10.30: 3-paper session
8. Magic and Technology
• Carolina Escobar (Reading):
Technology is not magic, or is it? A twelfth-century debate
• Alison Harthill (Cardiff):
Necromantic Mechanics: Misunderstood Medieval Technology
• Sara Tagliagamba (Ecole Pratiques des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne, Paris):
Bewitched by demons and angels: Automata, magic and technology in the Renaissance
9. The Science of Experience and the Experience of Science in Chaucerian Dream Poetry
• Charlotte Rudman (King’s College London):
Soundscapes in Chaucer’s Dream Poems
• Charlotte Knight (King’s College London):
Exploring the Science of Memory in Chaucer’s Dream Poems
• Koren Kuntz (Durham):
Ekphrasis, Cognition, and Multimodality in Chaucer’s Dream Poetry
10. Literary Technologies
• Juliette Vuille (University of Oxford):
‘Don’t Shoot the Messenger’: Chaucer’s Experimentation with Messenger Figures
• Jenni Nuttall (St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford):
The Techne of Verse-Making: Poetry’s Termes in Middle English
• Sarah Noonan (Lindenwood University):
Silent Emendations: Modern Foliation and the Obscured Sophistication of Late-Medieval Technologies of Mise-en-page
10.30 -11.00:Refreshments
11.00 -12.30:3-paper sessions
11. Magic and Medicine
• Katherine Hindley (Yale):
‘Mak a rynge and wryte with in’: Text as Technology in Late Medieval England
• Elma Brenner (Wellcome)
'Between Magic and Religious Culture: Charms in Late Medieval English Medical Manuscripts'
• Mike Leahy (Birkbeck):
Relics and Urinals: The Power of Objects in The Canterbury Tales
12. Time in Chaucer
• Kara Gaston (University of Toronto):
“Quid enim non carmina possunt?”: Magic and the Poetics of Time Management from Metamorphoses 7 to The Franklin's Tale
• Dawn Walts (Lewis University):
The Monk’s Chilindre and the Merchant’s Reckoning in The Shipman’s Tale
• Simon Meecham-Jones (Birkbeck):
Technophobia in ‘The Former Age’
13. Philosophical Questions
• Tekla Bude (Newnham College Cambridge):
Fetheres of Philosopye: Chaucer and the Metaphysics of Music
• Alexander Gabrovsky (Trinity College Cambridge):
Chaucer and the Physics of Sublunary Transformation
• Wan-Chuan Kao (Washington and Lee University):
Salvific Energy, Sustainable Faith
12.30 -13.30:Lunch
13.30 -15.00: 3-paper sessions
14. Fertility and Infertility
• Catherine Rider (University of Exeter):
Magic, Science and Fertility in Late Medieval England
• Anita Obermeier (University of New Mexico):
Birth and Birth Control in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
• Jennifer Alberghini (CUNY):
‘Unkynde Abhouminaciouns’: Monstrous Birth in the Man of Law’s Tale
15. Matter, Spirit and Alchemy
• Susanna Fein (Kent State University):
Perceptions of Matter and Spirit: Corpus Christi in Two Canterbury Tales
• Shazia Jagot (University of Southern Denmark):
Senior, Sufism and Secrets: The Alchemy of Chaucer’s Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
• Sandy Feinstein (Penn State University):
Teasing Science, Teasing Love: “Dalliance” in “To Rosemounde”
16. Scientific discourses in Chaucer
• Roberta Magnani (University of Swansea):
Astronomical Discourse and Queer Identities in the Glosses to The Man of Law’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Prologue
• Rebecca Pawel (Columbia University):
Chaucer’s Science Fiction
• Ben Parsons (University of Leicester):
The Windmills of the Mind: Milling, Madness and Merry-making
15.00-15.30:Refreshments
15.30 -17.30: 4-paper sessions
17. Magic and Morality
• Jacqueline Borsje (Amsterdam):
Gluttony and magic
• Tara Williams (Oregon State University):
Moral Chaucer and Magical Gower
• Carole Maddern (Goldsmiths):
'In Rome was swich oon': Virgil the Necromancer
• Robert Epstein (Fairfield University):
Magical Properties: The Anthropology of Sorcery and Ownership in Medieval Romance
18. Vision
• Jonathan Hsy (George Washington University):
Lyric Devices: Toward a New Cultural History of Medieval Eyeglasses
• Victoria Flood (Phillips-Universität Marburg/ University of Durham): ‘
With a look his herte wex a-fere’: The ‘Aggressive Eyes Topos’ and Chaucerian Tragedy
• Jacqueline Tasioulas (Cambridge)
Recognition and the ‘Idole of ane Thyng’ in Henryson and Chaucer
• David Raybin (Eastern Illinois University):
Stories of Canterbury: Chaucer and the Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral
17.45-18.45 Plenary 2
Lisa H Cooper (University of Wisconsin-Madison),
On Location: Agronomy and Other Affective Arts
19.00 Conference dinner at Antalya
