From the 13th to the 15th of November, we held our first Emotion and the Medieval Self in Northern Europe workshop in Utrecht, Netherlands, and by all accounts it was a great success. On the first afternoon, Frank Brandsma led a round of general introductions and Sif Ríkharðsdóttir introduced and outlined the project; then Timothy Bourns led a discussion of key terms and working definitions and Carolyne Larrington concluded with the aims and goals of the workshop. Having prepared ourselves for the next day’s discussion of emotion and selfhood in medieval Dutch, Norse, and German romance, we had a joyful dinner at the charming pancake house De oude Muntkelder, before heading back to the Court Hotel for an early night.
The second day featured the texts themselves; participants were asked to share a passage in advance which they then presented for group discussion in the workshop, as we aimed to utilise key terms (emotion, self, performativity) to articulate possible cultural contingencies of emotive performativity or selfhood, textual idiosyncracies, cross-cultural traces, and linguistic characteristics. In the opening Dutch Session, Frank Brandsma (Utrecht) presented on Queen Guinevere’s madness and loss of self in Lanceloet, Martine Veldhuizen (Utrecht) on Constantine and the weeping mothers in Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea, and Chloé Vondenhoff (Iceland and Utrecht) on Perceval’s memory loss and penitence in Perchevael.
Following lunch, textual discussion turned northwards with the Norse Session, starting with Carolyne Larrington (Oxford) on Blensibil’s sighting of Kanelangres and lovesickness in Tristans saga ok Ísöndar, Timothy Bourns (Iceland) on animal emotionality and the lion in Ívens saga, and Sif Ríkharðsdóttir (Iceland) on Íven’s madness and emotive performance in Ívens saga. Ending the day’s discussion was the German Session, with Miriam Edlich-Muth (Düsseldorf) presenting on the negotiation of joy in Der Stricker’s Daniel von Blühenden Tal, Lucie Kaempfer (Oxford) on Partonopier’s fear before meeting Meliur in Konrad von Würzburg’s Partonopier und Meliur, Lena Zudrell (Vienna) on narratorial selfhood in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and Hartmann von Aue’s Erec, and Cora Dietl (Giessen) on the various shades of embarrassment in Parzival. After a very full, lively, and productive day of close reading and collaboration, we had a delicious workshop dinner at De Rechtbank in the Court Hotel.
On our third and final day, we concluded our discussion with comments from Bart Besamusca (Utrecht), who sat in on the workshop and provided valuable feedback on the project and its aims. We also revisited our working terms and definitions and discussed the project’s broader aims and goals in detail, before having a final lunch at Grand Café Luden. Thus concluded our first workshop, and we now look forward to our next gathering in Oxford in March, 2020, where we will examine emotion and selfhood in Middle English, Anglo-Norman and Old French, Welsh, Irish and Scots romance, once again exploring how emotion is conveyed and how such emotive performance contributes to constructing a notion of selfhood in the medieval North. We sincerely thank all of the participants for an incredibly instructive, engaging, and enjoyable workshop in Utrecht. We hope to stay in touch and see each other again before long!