Oaths, gifts and etiquette: How diplomacy was expressed through banquets
International Workshop, February 20, 2024
Paris, Tour Jean Sans Peur
The importance of banquets’ organization within the diplomatic policy of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has been often underlined by scholars. Banquets were the occasion for strengthening the relation with another court, celebrating new alliances, promoting devotional challenges like the crusades or demonstrating power and richness with showing off precious table settings, expensive food, sophisticated decorations and entremets. Scholars have been working to shed light on the meaning, intentions and results of these festivals from the diplomatic point of view by digging into the rich documentation left by the reports and accounts of the expenses incurred by the courts or patrons who organized these feasts, historical records, letters, journals, texts or visual evidences like the representations found in paintings, miniatures or prints. But to these, some further kinds of evidences can be added, which include the lists of the dishes and delicacies offered during these banquets, descriptions of clothes and jewels, mentions of the gifts exchanged, reports on the etiquette required and any other information about how the organizer, the main guest or guests, and the other people invited intended to interact with each other in order to reach their objectives. The workshop will take place in the Tour Jean Sans Peur of Paris, a charming vestige of the Medieval Paris and of the difficult time of the war between Burgundians and Armagnacs.
The organizers of this workshop (Maddalena Bellavitis, Loïc Bienassis and Milan Svoboda) invite papers addressing issues that can shed new light and provide new interdisciplinary research trajectories on any topic that can be connected with the study of diplomatic aspects of Medieval and Renaissance banquets.
To be considered for participation, please provide a single pdf document including a one-page proposal for a 20-minute presentation of unpublished work and a short bio.
Presentations will be in French and English.
Applications may be sent to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com by October 15, 2023, specifying in the object the title of the workshop you are applying for (participants will be notified at the end of October).