Literary London Reading Group Seminar: Medieval Foundations
08 October 2019, 6:00 pm–7:30 pm
We are delighted to invite you to the first seminar of the Literary London Reading Group of the academic year 2019/2020: 'Medieval Foundations: St Erkenwald and the Hidden Histories of St Paul’s Cathedral'. Dr Alastair Bennett will be taking us back to medieval London and introducing the Middle English poem 'St Erkenwald'.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Alistair Robinson, Alexander Grafen, Naomi Hindsalexander.grafen.16@ucl.ac.uk, naomi.hinds.18@ucl.ac.uk
Location
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IAS Seminar room 11First floor, South Wing, UCLLondonWC1E 6BTUnited Kingdom
The Middle English poem St Erkenwald survives in a single manuscript that was made in 1477, but the poem itself was probably composed much earlier, in the 1390s or the 1400s. In the first part of the poem, workmen digging new foundations for improvements to St Paul’s Cathedral discover an ornate tomb, engraved with indecipherable lettering, and, inside it, the body of a pagan judge, miraculously preserved. In the second part, the people send for Erkenwald, the bishop of London, who commands the judge’s body to speak: the judge tells Erkwenwald about his virtuous life and about the scrupulous, even-handed judgements he made, but reveals that his soul is condemned to hell because he lived before England was converted to Christianity. The stage is set for Erkenwald’s miraculous intervention …
This poem tells a striking and memorable story about London’s patron saint. It also offers some sophisticated reflections on the hidden history of the city, and of its sacred spaces in particular. The Londoners who witness these miraculous events in the poem are confronted with the history of their pre-Christian past, a history that is preserved in the architecture they inhabit, but no longer recorded in their written texts. We will read the poem in a modern English translation, but the meeting will also provide a chance to read and consider some extracts from the Middle English text.
Bio
Alastair Bennett is Lecturer in Medieval Literature in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, where he teaches a course on the Literature of Medieval London as part of the MA programme. He has published on Chaucer and Langland, Middle English sermons and medieval writing about prayer. He is writing a book about preaching in Langland’s Piers Plowman and working on an edition of the A version of Piers from a manuscript in Lincoln’s Inn.
Please find further information here.