The medieval reading group will meet on Wednesday, 3 Nov in GR03, Faculty of English to hear Shirley Zhang’s paper ‘Interpreting motherhood in Old French and Middle English Merlin narratives’, followed by discussion and drinks. All are welcome.

This paper discusses the interpretation of motherhood in the Vulgate Merlin and its three Middle English adaptations. Comparing the narrative strategies adopted by the authors in the process of adaptation, it considers various aspects of a mother’s life in late medieval communities reflected and negotiated in these texts.

The Old English Reading Group (OERG) meets at 5pm every Tuesday to translate a range of poetry and prose texts in Old English. The group is informal and all abilities are welcome. If you’d like to be added to our mailing list, or have any other questions, please e-mail the group convenor, currently Albert Fenton (agpf2).

His Royal Favour: The Books That Built the Library

In September 1715, George I presented to the University a transformative gift; the 30,000 books and manuscripts collected by Bishop John Moore. For three hundred years these volumes have been at the heart of University research, and our current exhibition shows a selection of these, ranging from an eighth-century manuscript of Bede to scientific and architectural masterpieces. For more information, please visit: https://exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/royal/.

On Thu. 29th Oct. at 5pm, the Cambridge Medieval French Research Seminar will welcome Professor Emma Dillon from King’s College London to give a paper on ‘Music and the medieval French romance tradition’. The venue is the Audit Room, King’s College, Cambridge. Papers last between 20 and 50 minutes, and are followed by discussion. Wine and water will be served.

Professor Emma Dillon is Professor of Music. She worked at the Music Department at the University of Pennsylvania until 2012 first as an Assistant Professor and later as a Full Professor, and also served as Chair of the Department. She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, a Member and Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Studies (School of Historical Studies) in Princeton, and a Visiting Scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. She joined the Music Department at King’s in 2013, and is also an active member of the Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies.

The next medieval graduate seminar will meet on 28 October in the Board Room in the English Faculty to hear Sara Harris’s paper “Custom and Character in Thomas’ ‘Roman de Horn’”. Dr. Sara Harris is a Junior Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. She works on the multilingual literature of medieval Britain, and particularly on medieval perceptions of language change. Her book manuscript, Still Voices: Twelfth-Century Perceptions of Britain’s Linguistic Past, is currently in preparation for publication. She is now beginning a new project, on the contested portrayals of ancestral law and custom found in romance, legal forgeries, histories, saints’ lives, and poetry from the Becket conflict to the fourteenth century.

This term’s CALM workshop will take place on Thursdays at 5 pm in Teaching Room, Oldham Hall, Lucy Cavendish College. For details of the speakers and their topics, please see the poster of the programme.

This term’s ASNC Research Seminar will meet at 5pm in the department on the following days:

23 Oct., Kerstin Hundahl (Lunds Universitet): ‘All three shall be kings’: The Battle for the Danish Throne, 1241-1259

27 Nov., Aaron Ralby (Independent scholar, Cambridge): Memory, Space, and Style: Wisdom Literature in Theory and Practice

The talks will last for approximately one hour including questions. All are welcome to the talk and an informal drink at a local pub afterwards.

The CRASSH-based series ‘Cambridge Conversations in Translation’ (CCiT) will run throughout 2015-2016, and it will bring together a wide range of people all of whom are interested in the theory and practice of translation. Full details about the series can be found here:
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/cambridge-conversations-in-translation

This term’s ‘History of Material Texts Seminar’ will take place on Thursdays at 5 pm. The topic and venue of each meeting are listed below:

15 Oct. Discussion of Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 45/3 (2015), ‘The Renaissance Collage’ (This special issue is available online at http://jmems.dukejournals.org/content/current. If you are willing to introduce/respond to an article in the collection, please contact jes1003@cam.ac.uk.) Venue: Milstein Seminar Room, CUL

29 Oct. Jennifer Richards (Newcastle University), ‘Listening readers and the visible voice’
Venue: S-R24, Faculty of English

12 Nov. Catherine Ansorge (University Library), ‘Ink and gold; how the Islamic manuscripts came to Cambridge’
Venue: Milstein Seminar Room, CUL

26 Nov. Vittoria Feola (University of Padua/University of Oxford), ‘The Bartolomeo Gamba Project – or, the London-Paris-Padua book trade connection, 1600-1840′.
Venue: Milstein Seminar Room, CUL

The first meeting of the Medieval Reading Group this term will take place on Wednesday, 21 Oct. in GR03, Faculty of English. We will gather to hear Albert Fenton’s paper ‘’Power, Privilege and Protocol: Anglo-Saxon writs and their opening clauses’, followed by discussion and drinks. All are welcome.

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Albert Fenton is a third year PhD student in the department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, working under Professor Simon Keynes. He previously studied as an undergraduate in the same department, and for an MA at University College London in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. His research focuses on the use of writs and other vernacular documents in the eleventh century, and is particularly interested in ideas of power, kingship and the law in the early medieval period.