Urbana Campus Research Calendar (OVCRI)

“Engaging Materialities in Early Medieval England”

This talk asks the question of how, as scholars mainly of written works, we can restore to the story of Englishness the lively material interactions between words, bodies, plants, stones, metals, and soil, among other things, that would have characterized it for the early medieval English themselves. In a series of examples, the talk will consider how early medieval texts work within systems that include climate, soil, landscape features, plants, and animals, and will argue that, without an attempt to recognize these systems, we are at risk of missing the ways that written works resonated with their original audiences.

Dr. Fay is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Arlington.