"Medieval French without Borders"
40th Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University
March 20-21, 2021
This digital conference addresses the multilingual contact zones and social, cultural and literary contexts of exchange in which French featured between the ninth and the sixteenth centuries. A second language of several empires, a tongue of invaders, and an idiom spread by merchants, sailors, artisans, and pilgrims, French was a medium of both border-construction and border-crossing. The program includes papers on the dynamic relations between French and other languages including Arabic, Castilian, Dutch, English, German, Greek, Hebrew, Irish, Italian, Latin, Norse, Occitan, and Welsh. Such relations often exceed traditional explanatory frameworks of cultural prestige and the nation. Talks are available as online videos, which can be watched at any time before the conference. The conference weekend will be dedicated to the plenary lectures and discussion of the pre-circulated videos.
Plenary Lecturers: Wolfgang Haubrichs (Universität des Saarlandes) and Teresa Shawcross (Princeton University)
Round Table Panelists: Thelma Fenster (Fordham University), Karla Mallette (University of Michigan), Anne-Hélène Miller (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), Sara Poor (Princeton University), Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Fordham University)
Program and online registration can be found here:
https://mvstconference.ace.fordham.edu/medievalfrenchwithoutborders/conference-program/
Saturday, March 20, 2021
9:45 – 11:00 a.m. – Session 1: Welcome and Plenary I
9:45 – Welcome – Nicholas Paul, Director of the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University
10:00 – 11:00 a.m. – Wolfgang Haubrichs, Universität des Saarlandes
Rustica Romana Lingua and Theotisca Lingua: Early Medieval Multilingualism and Contacts between Gallo-Romance and Germanic in the Regions of the Rivers Rhine, Moselle and Meuse
Chair: Elizabeth M. Tyler, University of York
WOLFGANG HAUBRICHS’S TALK WILL BE DELIVERED AS A ZOOM WEBINAR ON SATURDAY, MARCH 20.
11:10 – 11:50 a.m. – Session 2: Concurrent Sessions
2A: FRENCH LITERATURE, FRANCE, AND THE EMPIRE
Chair: Sarah Kay, New York University
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
To register, click here.
Introduction and Rationale
Sarah Kay, New York University
Participants are advised that Sarah Kay’s précis introduces the papers in this session and should be read first.
The Transmission of Medieval French Literature to German-Speaking Regions
Keith Busby, University of Wisconsin–Madison
The Presence of French in German Courtly Literature, ca. 1200
Mark Chinca, University of Cambridge
2B: GLOBAL MEDIEVAL FRENCH: LANGUAGES OF THE LOCAL AND THE UNIVERSAL
Chair: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, University of Pittsburgh
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session
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Romancing Allegory: Theories of Outremer French
Uri Shachar, Ben-Gurion University
A Barnacle Goose by Any Other Name: Language and Cultural Relativism in the Livre des merveilles du monde of Sir John Mandeville
Christine Bourgeois, University of Kansas
‘Zo Gaston, traïtour’: Froissart and the Menace of Occitan
Andrew Taylor, University of Ottawa
2C: ANCIENT HISTORY IN MEDITERRANEAN CITIES AND COURTS
Chair: Susanna Barsella, Fordham University
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
To register, click here.
Ernoul-Bernard’s Chronique and the Eracles in Italy: Manuscripts, Translations and Adaptations
Massimiliano Gaggero, University of Milan
‘Dize en la estoria francesa’: The Circulation of Francophone Matter of Antiquity in Medieval Castile (c. 1200-1369)
Clara Pascual-Argente, Rhodes College
12:00 – 12:40 p.m. – Session 3: Concurrent Sessions
3A: HISTORY, ROMANCE, AND AUTHORSHIP
Panel Sponsored by the Centre for Medieval Literature, a Danish Centre of Excellence
Chair: Christopher Baswell, Barnard College and Columbia University
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
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Writing Women into History: Gaimar’s Estoire des engleis and Romance
Elizabeth Tyler, University of York
The Rise of French Prose and the Forces of Anonymity
Lars Boje Mortensen, University of Southern Denmark
Fictitious Communities and Textual Transmission: The Case of Pseudonymity in Arthurian Prose Romances
Nicola Morato, University of Liège
3B: MEDIEVAL FRENCH OUT OF PLACE?
Chair: Ardis Butterfield, Yale University
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
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Sounding the Cult of St. Nicholas: The Meeting of French and Latin in Hagiographic Song
Mary Channen Caldwell, University of Pennsylvania
Translating the Bisclavret: the Strengleikar and King Hákon Hákonarson’s Francophile Court
Sean Spillane, Fordham University
French in the Crown of Aragon: Code-Switching in Guillem de Torroella’s La Faula
Ana Pairet, Rutgers University – New Brunswick
3C: FRENCH AND THE MULTILINGUAL LITERARY CULTURE OF MEDIEVAL FLANDERS
Chair: Jane Gilbert, University College London
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
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The Multilingual Literary Culture of Medieval Flanders: An Introduction
Bart Besamusca, Utrecht University
French Manuscripts in Mono- and Multilingual Social Contexts in Thirteenth-Century Flanders
Lisa Demets, Utrecht University
In or Of? Towards a Literary History of French and Flanders in the Thirteenth Century
David Murray, Utrecht University
1:00 – 1:40 p.m. – Session 4: Concurrent Sessions
4A: BREAKING NEW INTELLECTUAL GROUND IN HOSPITALLER CYPRUS
Chair: George E. Demacopoulos, Fordham University
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
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‘De plusors et diverses choses‘: The Livre Saterian and the Francophone Cultures of Crusader Cyprus
Laura K. Morreale, Independent Scholar
Rhetorical invention in Outremer: Chantilly, Musée Condé 433
Julian Yolles, University of Southern Denmark
4B: FRENCH STORIES IN IRISH? THE CASE OF THE COLLOQUY OF THE ANCIENTS
Chair: Thomas O’Donnell, Fordham University
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
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In Dialogue with Normans: The Norman Presence in Ireland and Cultural Change
Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, University of Cambridge
Participants are advised that Máire Ní Mhaonaigh’s paper introduces the other papers in this session and should be viewed first.
St. Patrick’s Purgatory & Acallam na Senórach
Anne Connon, Ohio Dominican University
Outsiders in Acallam na Senórach and the Positing of French Literary Influence on the Text
Geraldine Parsons, University of Glasgow
4C: MAKING AND CROSSING BORDERS
Chair: Felisa Baynes-Ross, Yale University
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
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Texts without Borders: Interpolation in Medieval Francophone Histories of England
Hannah Weaver, Columbia University
Denis Piramus’s La Vie Seint Edmund: Translating Cultural Identities in the Anglo-Norman World
Gabriela Faundez-Rojas, University of Miami
Transnational Romance: The Romans antiques in the Later Middle Ages
Venetia Bridges, Durham University
Sunday, March 21, 2021
10:00 – 11:00 a.m. – Session 5: Plenary II
Teresa Shawcross, Princeton University
From Liutprand of Cremona to Robert de Clari: Wonder and the Translation of Knowledge Before and After the Crusader Conquest of Constantinople
Chair: Marisa Galvez, Stanford University
TERESA SHAWCROSS’S TALK WILL BE DELIVERED AS A ZOOM WEBINAR ON SUNDAY, MARCH 21.
11:10 – 11:50 a.m. – Session 6: Concurrent Sessions
6A: FRENCH IN THE WORLD OF MEDIEVAL HEBREW
Chair: Magda Teter, Fordham University
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
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Our Language and the Others: Old French Glosses in Berechiah Ha-Nakdan’s Uncle and Nephew and Commentary on the Book of Job
Ruth Nisse, Wesleyan University
Mixed Metaphors, Mixed Forms: Across Medieval Hebrew and French Prosimetra
Isabelle Levy, Columbia University
Stories without Borders: French-to-Hebrew Literary Translation in Late Medieval Europe
Caroline Gruenbaum, University of Florida
6B: CODICOLOGY IN CONTACT
Chair: Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, New York University
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
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French Literary Manuscripts in England, 1100-1500: A Quantitative Approach
Krista A. Murchison, Leiden University
Looking French: A Comparative Codicology of Manuscripts in Multilingual Flanders
Jenneka Janzen, Utrecht University
Vernacular Multilingualism: The Use of French in Medieval Dutch Literature
Jelmar Hugen, Utrecht University
12:00 – 12:40 p.m. – Session 7: Concurrent Sessions
7A: A VERNACULAR FOR LEARNING
Chair: Hal Momma, New York University
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
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Encyclopaedic French as a Multilingual Contact Zone
Luke Sunderland, Durham University
Through the Vernacular to the Truth: Jewish Apologetic and Dialogic Register in the French Livre of Moses ben Abraham (1244)
Maria Teresa Rachetta, King’s College London
‘Mes cest romanz a laie gent / Assez suffit plenerement’: Computus Texts and the Languages of Knowledge in 13th-century England
Edward Mills, University of Exeter
7B: BORDERS IN EARLY MODERN FRENCH? FRANCE, FLANDERS, AND THE LOW COUNTRIES
Chair: Francesca Canadé Sautman, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
Registered participants may click here to view videos and précis for this session.
To register, click here.
‘En translacion de langage francoiz‘ : French Targets in the Burgundian Translation Zone
Dirk Schoenaers, Leiden University
Francophone or Francophobe? Ambivalent Attitudes Towards French in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries
Alisa van de Haar, Leiden University
How France Stole French from the Habsburgs: The Valois and Habsburg Dukes of Burgundy and the Elevation of the French Language, 14th-16th Centuries
Paul Cohen, University of Toronto
1:00 – 2:00 p.m. – Session 8: Concluding Roundtable
Chair: Thelma Fenster, Fordham University
Karla Mallette, University of Michigan
Anne-Hélène Miller, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Sara Poor, Princeton University
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Fordham University