Voice, Song, and Silence in Medieval England (A Roundtable)
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Taylor Cowdery, Spencer Strub
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Univ. of California-Berkeley
Presider Name
Spencer Strub
Paper Title 1
Verging on Voice: Late Medieval Manuscripts and the Aural Horizon
Presenter 1 Name
Andrew Albin
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Fordham Univ.
Paper Title 2
The Inner Touch: Medieval Music, Synaesthesis, and Interoception
Presenter 2 Name
Tekla Bude
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Oregon State Univ.
Paper Title 3
Quantum Silence and Transvestite Metaphysics
Presenter 3 Name
M. W. Bychowski
Presenter 3 Affiliation
George Washington Univ.
Paper Title 4
Rhetorical Virtue
Presenter 4 Name
Anna Kelner
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Harvard Univ.
Paper Title 5
Speaking in Person
Presenter 5 Name
Fiona Somerset
Presenter 5 Affiliation
Univ. of Connecticut
Paper Title 6
The Voice of the Sluggard: Impersonated Interiorities in Pastoral Literature
Presenter 6 Name
Claire M. Waters
Presenter 6 Affiliation
Univ. of California-Davis
Start Date
14-5-2017 8:30 AM
Session Location
Bernhard 209
Description
This panel continues a conversation begun at the 2016 ICMS in a roundtable on "Rhetoric and Voice across the Fifteenth Century." That roundtable, also run by the co-organizers of this proposed session, explored the medieval intersections of two ideas, "voice" and "rhetoric," in response to David Lawton's pioneering work on voice in fifteenth-century devotional and literary writing. This session will extend the parameters of that conversation by reading the idea of voice against two more topics, "silence" and "song." By examining the intertwined history of voice, song, and silence across the Middle Ages, the session thus seeks to answer Lawton's call for "a continuous history of voice in English and other European literature." Working within that longer history, this roundtable understands "voice" not as a fixed category, but as a mobile one – for there are many voices in medieval England, voices whose meanings, textual and meta-textual, depend upon their contexts. One goal of this roundtable is to illuminate that heterogeneity in its full richness. We welcome papers that think about voice both within and beyond the page. How do spoken and written voices complement and differ from each other? To what extent was the history of English literature shaped by the quotidian regulation of speech in monastic rules, penitential and pastoral guidelines, and legal codes? And how does voice change when it is sung rather than spoken, whether in liturgy, lyric, or "popular song"? We would also invite papers on the absence of voice. How can we understand practices of silence, for instance, both religious or secular? What sorts of "voice" can those who are voiceless be said to possess?
Spencer A. Strub
Voice, Song, and Silence in Medieval England (A Roundtable)
Bernhard 209
This panel continues a conversation begun at the 2016 ICMS in a roundtable on "Rhetoric and Voice across the Fifteenth Century." That roundtable, also run by the co-organizers of this proposed session, explored the medieval intersections of two ideas, "voice" and "rhetoric," in response to David Lawton's pioneering work on voice in fifteenth-century devotional and literary writing. This session will extend the parameters of that conversation by reading the idea of voice against two more topics, "silence" and "song." By examining the intertwined history of voice, song, and silence across the Middle Ages, the session thus seeks to answer Lawton's call for "a continuous history of voice in English and other European literature." Working within that longer history, this roundtable understands "voice" not as a fixed category, but as a mobile one – for there are many voices in medieval England, voices whose meanings, textual and meta-textual, depend upon their contexts. One goal of this roundtable is to illuminate that heterogeneity in its full richness. We welcome papers that think about voice both within and beyond the page. How do spoken and written voices complement and differ from each other? To what extent was the history of English literature shaped by the quotidian regulation of speech in monastic rules, penitential and pastoral guidelines, and legal codes? And how does voice change when it is sung rather than spoken, whether in liturgy, lyric, or "popular song"? We would also invite papers on the absence of voice. How can we understand practices of silence, for instance, both religious or secular? What sorts of "voice" can those who are voiceless be said to possess?
Spencer A. Strub