The Medieval Schoolroom and the Literary Arts: Grammar and its Institutions

Description

Conveners:

 

Christopher Cannon (Girton College and the Faculty of English, Cambridge)
Rita Copeland (Departments of Classical Studies and English, University of Pennsylvania)
Nicolette Zeeman ( King's College and the Faculty of English, Cambridge)

 

In Piers Plowman the figure Anima famously declares that 'grammar is ground of all', but how and in what ways was this true? This conference brings together prominent intellectual and cultural historians of the Middle Ages with scholars of various medieval literatures in order to address this question. It hopes to begin an interdisciplinary conversation in which grammatical writings, commentary traditions, manuscript evidence, historical account, and the particular shapes and meanings discerned in literary texts can be brought to bear, simultaneously, in reconstructing and detailing medieval grammar's uses, effects, and broad reach. The conference also hopes to be more broadly exploratory in both method and theory, investigating not only the connection between schoolroom practices and the literary arts, but the variety of ways such connections might be construed.

Sponsors
King's College, University of Cambridge
CRASSH, University of Cambridge
University of Pennsylvania