Worm, Snake, or Dragon?

A Lexical Landscape of the Beowulf Manuscript

Haruko Momma (NYU University)

Feb 5 2016
7:30pm

CUNY Graduate Center
365 5th Ave (btw 34th and 35th Streets)
English Studies Conference Room (4406)

This talk considers the cultural ecology of the Beowulf Manuscript through a lexical study.  The texts contained in this codex come in different forms, ranging from an original poem (Beowulf) to a verse adaptation of a biblical narrative (Judith) to renditions of Latin prose with varying degrees of intervention from the translators; these texts also take place in different geographical locations, including India (The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle), Samos (The Passion of Saint Christopher), and, roughly speaking, the eastern part of the Mediterranean world (The Wonders of the East).  Despite their diversity, these texts are believed by many critics to have been anthologized because of their shared theme of the “monstrous.”  In this talk, I will take a new approach to this issue by examining the semantic range of a certain lexeme as it is used in the manuscript.  The word in question is wyrm, which, rather mysteriously, signifies 'worm', 'snake', and 'dragon', and which refers to diverse animals in the manuscript.  Because of a specific register of this polysemous word, which seems closely connected with its etymology, the distribution and the use of wyrm sheds light on the nature of the manuscript and also of the individual texts therein. This exercise encourages us not only to re-open the age-old question of the pagan-Christian relationship in Beowulf, but also to address the question of the representation of nature in Anglo-Saxon literature.  I will end this talk with a speculation on one of the origins of “realism” in English-language literature.

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The Raw and the Wrought

The Persistence of Matter in Medieval Art  
December 4 2015
The Rossell Hope Robbins Lecture
Anne Harris, DePauw University
7:30pm
CUNY Graduate Center
365 5th Ave (btw 34th and 35th Streets)
English Studies Conference Room (4406)

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The Boys on the Beach:
Children's Games and Baptismal Grace in the Middle Ages.
October 9 2015 
7:30pm
English Common Room 4406
CUNY Graduate Center

    

Marcia Colish,

Professor Emerita, Department of History, Oberlin College 

While medieval Christians firmly agreed that baptism was a sacrament of necessity, there was considerable disagreement on what makes a baptism a valid sacrament.  One such debate was triggered by conflicting responses to a passage in Rufinus of Aquileia's Ecclesiastical History in which Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, validates the playful baptism of boys on the beach by the child Athanasius, his own protégé and successor.  Up through ca. 1300, thinkers who cited Rufinus, often in selective and garbled form, used him as a template for their appropriation of their other key  authority, Augustine's De baptismo, and framed their solutions in the light of a range of arguments on different issues.  They reached no consensus on the question itself, reflecting a larger medieval reality often lost sight of by proponents of the rise of a persecuting society in the Middle Ages:  the acceptability, within the medieval orthodox Christian consensus, of more than one position on a fundamental theological doctrine. 

co-sponsored with Friends of the Saints

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Schedule of Talks Fall 2015 to Spring 2016

2015-2016 Medieval Club of New York
Schedule of Talks

Most events will be held at 7.30 p.m. in the English Studies Conference Room of the Graduate Center, CUNY (room 4406). A wine and cheese reception follows the speaker’s presentation and question time.

Titles to be announced in a future update to this post, but for now, mark your calendars.

Sept 18, 2015, 2 tours of the Morgan Library's "William Caxton and the Birth of English Printing" exhibition, at 7PM and 8PM, led by John McQuillen. **Meet at Morgan Library.

Each tour is limited to 15 persons only, so please sign up in advance, by emailing Professor Sara McDougall of John Jay College, CUNY.

Oct 9, 2015, Marcia Colish, co-sponsored with Friends of the Saints, "The Boys on the Beach: Children’s Games and Baptismal Grace in the Middle Ages"

Nov 13, 2015, Caroline Walker Bynum, co-sponsored by Friends of the Saints

**Location Graduate Center, 9205/9206

Dec 4, 2015, Anne Harris, Art History, DePauw University

Feb 5, 2016, Hal Momma, English Literature, NYU

March 4, 2016, Marilynn Desmond, English, SUNY Binghamton

April 1, Simon Doubleday, History, Hofstra

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Medieval Club at Kalamazoo
Medieval Money
Saturday May 16th, 2015
3.30 p.m.
Schneider 1330
International Congress on Medieval Studies

 The Medieval Club of New York presents four papers that consider the role of money in late medieval Europe, on the one hand in its extended sense in literary and spiritual contexts and on the other in its daily banking practices and management of debt. Together the papers pose essential questions about the difference between modern and medieval money.
Frederick M. Biggs Money in Decameron 8.1, 8.2, and 8.10 and in the Shipman's Tale
Lauren Jocobi Reifying Money: Banks in Florence and Rome, ca. 1250-1500
Judith Potter Public Debt Books as a Money Substitute
David Lavinsky Alienated Labor and Sacramental Doubt: Rethinking the “valewe” of the Host in Late Medieval England

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