Seminar Index

Designed to cover the most important sources, the seminar programme comprises ten sessions. Week one introductes the basic principles involved in the study of medieval sources, including the importance of understanding the manuscripts in which they were preserved. The programme proper begins in week two with charters and cartularies. Weeks four to seven, the core of the course, attend to the various types of historical writing which flourished in the Middle Ages. These sources have long been mined for the basic narrative of medieval history, but are also important for understanding how institutions used the past. Week eight turns to the complexities of the medieval miscellany. In its final two weeks, the course turns to sources with a musical and theatrical element: liturgical books and Latin poetry—rich sources of data which are all too often overlooked.

Running for two hours, the seminars will take place in Lent Term. The schedule will be as follows:

Week Dates in 2022–2023 Seminar Topic
11 16 January Introduction
12 23 January Charters, Cartularies and Other Administrative Records
13 30 January Letters and Letter Collections
14 6 February Annals and Chronicles—Origins and Early Development
15 13 Feburary Rhetorical Histories
16 20 February Later Medieval Chronicles and Histories
17 27 February Hagiography
18 6 March The Medieval Miscellany
19 13 March Liturgical Books
20 20 March Poetry and Song

 

'Go forward! / Advance!'

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