'Travelling Objects'.
From Text to Thing and Back Again, 1000 – 1200

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 12 – 15 July 2010

We are planning a series of interdisciplinary sessions on the object in
the Romanesque Period for IMC 2010’s theme “Travel and Exploration”. The
proposed sessions will investigate in an interdisciplinary or
cross-disciplinary way the ways in which the object was presented,
treated, described, and received by a medieval audience. Each session will
consider a single object, or object type, using different varieties of
literary and visual sources, such as Old French epic, courtly romance,
etc., and actual objects, or things. More particularly, speakers shall
consider how the biography of things real, faked, or forged, was built up
in the 11th and 12th centuries, studying their transfer from one media
into the other. The papers should consider two kinds of objects: first,
the ones that were called into existence after having been created
textually, such as Roland’s or Charlemagne’s horn, in what may be called a
concretion, or precipitation; and second, the ones that were singled out
among others thanks to a network of written texts, and which gave in turn
an impulse for further stories, such as Saint Martin’s vase in
Saint-Maurice Abbey treasure.

It is hoped that, through these sessions, we will raise and begin to
answer a number of key questions about the process of materialization
which emerged in the course of the 11th century, about the status of the
object, and about the interplay between textual and concrete entities in
the Middle Ages. That should also allows one to question the status of the
realia, and meanwhile to write a new chapter of the “analysis of things”
(or Dingforschung).

Topics should include but are not limited to Charlemagne’s Objects;
Oliphants; Precious stones, gems, cameos, or fallen objects; Marvels;
Oriental relics. We are planning up to five sessions.

Please send paper proposals to Prof. Alain Corbellari (University of
Lausanne) and Prof. Pierre Alain Mariaux (University of Neuchâtel) at
either Alain.Corbellariunil.ch<mailto:Alain.Corbellariunil.ch> or
Pierre-Alain.Mariauxunine.ch<mailto:Pierre-Alain.Mariauxunine.ch> by 10
September 2009.

Proposals should include Title
Abstract (max 250 words)
Your name, institution, and role
Full postal and electronic contact
details

Please also indicate whether you wish your proposal to be considered for
inclusion in an edited volume of the series of papers.