Program in Medieval Studies at Brown University

05/15/2023

You are cordially invited to a presentation by and for alumni who concentrated in Medieval Studies, Medieval Cultures, and Late Antique Cultures.

Laura Saetveit Miles (’03), Professor of British Literature at the University of Bergen, Norway will give a talk on “Who Was Medieval England’s Most Popular Woman Writer?”

For more information go to https://events.brown.edu/medieval/event/251497-the-program-in-medieval-studies-alumni-reunion

03/02/2022

This excerpt from "The Dark Queens" by Shelley Puhak reveals a connection between a scene in Macbeth and a medieval battle strategy.

05/04/2021

CONGRATULATIONS TO 2021 GRADUATES,
Pablo Caban-Bonet and Ryan Simpson!
Stay in touch!

02/08/2021

A Medieval Noblewoman’s Guide to Dressing Up

A look inside Eleanor de Montfort’s wardrobe, and why it was important for a 13th-century countess to dress extravagantly and beautifully.

02/03/2021

A Viking Archaeologist Shares 6 of the Most Fascinating Finds From a Slew of Recent Discoveries Made in Melting Ice

Global warming has caused ice patches to melt and unlock ancient Viking artifacts. We spoke to an archaeologist about the greatest finds.

05/26/2020

Congratulations to our Medieval Cultures graduates, Paige Banks, Ella Burguera, and Charlie Steinman! Best of luck to you!

11/11/2019

Dear Friends,

Please join us to the lecture by Alani Hicks-Bartlett titled "Loving Firmly or Not at All: On the Fixity of Desire in Medieval Love Poetry."

From descriptions of the singularity of one’s lady to exaltations of the singularity of one’s voice, Medieval Love Poems—particularly those written in a seemingly felicitous key—have a tendency to extol the unique combination of Fortune, virtue, and chance, along with certain vagaries of time and chance that facilitate the moment of innamoramento. Once enamored, the poet is able to hone his desire and refine his identity as a loving subject while establishing himself through song. It is this song, of course, self-referential as it is, along with the proclamations of desire that it contains, that are crafted and mobilized such that they reinforce the lover’s persistent argument: they insist on his amorous exemplarity, and the singularity of his voice, while making the case for his suitability for reciprocal love. His devotion is unmovable, he claims, and the fidelity in love that he demonstrates through descriptions of the eternal fixity of his desires are techniques he uses to prove his commitment to the lady and enjoin her to love him.

Yet what happens when the possibility of reciprocity is no longer an option and the lover’s plans (and poetry) are fundamentally contravened? “Loving Firmly or Not at All: On the Fixity of Desire in Medieval Love Poetry” examines these instances of frustration in love through select examples from Medieval French, Italian, and Spanish poetry.

Alani Hicks-Bartlett is a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Departments of French Studies and Hispanic Studies, and the Program in Medieval Studies. Her research interests include the querelle des femmes, fabliaux, gender and violence in chansons de geste and Early Modern epic poetry, Chrétien de Troyes, and the development of the love lyric/Petrarchan tradition. Her current projects focus on gender and race in Medieval French literature, representations of disability in Medieval and Early Modern prose compositions, and Medieval women’s writing and the complaint tradition.

10/07/2019

Dear friends of the Program in Medieval Studies,

We're glad to invite you to the second lecture of the year presented by Christopher Berard on “King Arthur’s Charter: A Thirteenth-Century French Satire Against Bretons.” Thursday, Oct. 17, Annmary Brown Memorial, 5:30 PM.

The lecture will center on a faux charter (written c. 1250) purporting to have been issued by Arthur, king of the Briton, in the hundredth year of his immortality (c. 642). The Arthurian portion of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, the genesis of the myth of King Arthur’s return, and the medieval history of negative ethnic stereotyping of the Brittonic Celts all factor into Berard’s contextualization of the act.

Christopher Berard (Ph.D. 2015 in Medieval Studies, University of Toronto) is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Providence College and has recently published Arthurianism in Early Plantagenet England: From Henry II to Edward I (Boydell Press, 2019). He is a specialist in Arthurian literature and medieval chronicles, and in his monograph he investigates how post-Conquest kings of England emulated and otherwise used the legendary King Arthur of Britain for political gain, as well as how this activity in turn impacted depictions of Arthur in literature. Professor Berard’s writing shows how “medievalism” was already being practiced in the twelfth century by Anglo-Normans interested in the ancient (to them) past of the sixth-century Briton, King Arthur.

09/06/2019

Dear Friend of Medieval Studies at Brown,

We would like to invite you to our first RI Circle lecture of the year on Thursday, September 19, at the Annmary Brown Memorial, 5:30 PM.

Delphine Demelas will talk on "Chansons, Poems or Cycles? Composing French Epic at the End of the 14th Century."

The late chansons de geste, the French epic poems composed between the 14th and the 15th century, have long been hated by critics. Too long, too complex, too repetitive… the attacks have abounded all along the 20th century to highlight all of the shortcomings of these poems. In this lecture, Delphine Demelas will shed some light on the stylistic patterns of these songs to understand their composition. She will explore the link between old and more recent French epic style, discussing linguistic, historical and sociological hypotheses to explain the transformation of epic from the 14th century to the end of the Middle Ages. She will try to rise some interest for these outcast texts, which have suffered misinterpretation for too long.

Delphine Demelas studies French medieval language and literature. Her research focuses on late chansons de geste and scientific edition. She has published several works on the literary value of late epic medieval literature. Her research also deals with the life of medieval artifacts and the use of manuscripts after Middle Ages. She is currently working on a digital edition of La Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin using the XML/TEI guidelines.