Middle English Literary Environments

In recent decades and with our enhanced awareness of the climate crisis, literary representations of the environment, broadly defined, have become fertile ground for scholarly work. Often grounded in ecocriticism, this work moves beyond studying what is often loosely-called “nature writing” to a wide range of literature. Such work has certainly examined the non-human environment, but it has also explored urban, monastic, scholarly, and a plethora of other environments as well as inhabitants of those environments and their interrelationships. This session of the 2022-2023 Illinois Medieval Association Symposium will explore environmental representations in Middle English literature. The session will run on Zoom beginning at 3:00 CDT and is completely free. 

The papers to be presented are

Julie Hawkins, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, University of New England, “How do Middle English texts depict humans in relation to Nature? A look at human engagement with environments in SGGK.”

Sakti Sekhar Dash, Fellow of Social Science Research Council, Open Association of Research Society, “From Wilderness to the Gardens: Understanding Eco-theory in Middle English Literature”

Lorenz Hindrichsen, Copenhagen International School, “Streets and Roads in the Canterbury Tales”

We will send registration information shortly before the session.