Join the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies upcoming lecture: 'New Approaches to Medieval Historiography'.

Chaired by Dr Ed Roberts (Kent) with Prof Julia Marvin (Notre Dame), Prof Jesse Torgerson (Wesleyan), Prof Elizabeth Tyler (York), and Prof Björn Weiler (Aberystwyth).

Scholars of medieval historical writing have come to appreciate an array of lenses through which to view and consider their texts: audience expectation, reception, compilation, incompleteness, fictionality, contradiction, political imperative, authorial individuality, and more. Across medieval societies, the past was a constructio11 that could be made 'useful', but it was also supposed to be truthful, or at least credible. The past was always present, yet this 'presence' was constantly being contested, distilled, recycled, and mythologised to myriad ends. This seminar showcases how scholarly approaches continue to be refined and combined by examining medieval historical cultures in an explicitly comparative setting. The panel brings together four distinct perspectives on history writing from across the geographical and chronological breadth of the medieval world. Jesse Torgerson looks at Byzantine chronography in the ninth century; Elizabeth Tyler examines the reception of historical writing in tenth- and eleventh-century England; Björn Weiler explores twelfth-century Lotharingian chronicles; and Julia Marvin examines vernacular historiography in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England.

Get in touch with MEMS on twitter for the zoom link.