Call for Papers: The Exegetical Turn (Kalamazoo 2014)

Killing a heretic, killing a dragon.
BL Harley 2886

Biblical verses were never "naked" in the early Middle Ages. They were clothed in the heavy garments of tradition & weighed down with the burden of commentary. We have the tendency to see an 11th-century monastic chronicler cite Jeremiah and think "Jeremiah," when we shoul dbe thinking, with the author & intended reader, "Hrabanus," "Haimo," "Paschasius," and "Jerome." We tend to forget that men of the early Middle Ages, and the 10th and 11th centuries especially, encountered the Bible through Carolingian and Patristic commentaries. 

This session will therefore seek to see what precisely we may have missed, to reconsider historical, literary, and/ or artistic artifacts from the Middle Ages in light of the exegetical tradition in which they were created. Then, in turn, this session will allow us to ask if this new understanding of how these objects were created and received fundamentally change how we understand the European Middle Ages itself.     

Session sponsored by Virginia Tech Medieval & Early Modern Studies.

Proposals, with Participant Information Form, should be emailed as PDFs to Prof. Matthew Gabriele by September 15, 2013.