Brut in New Troy 2020
26-29 June 2020
University of Notre Dame London Global Gateway (1 Suffolk Street), London, UK
For centuries, the “standard” version of Britain’s history held that the realm was founded by an exiled descendant of Aeneas called Brut (or Brutus), who came to the island with a band of Trojans, defeated the hostile giants living there, named it after himself, and established the capital city of New Troy, later known as London.
Popularized by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain, this matter was read, translated, supplemented, and transformed across medieval and early modern Europe, and across the gamut of languages and forms. The history of figures such as Brut, Lear, Cordelia, Ursula, Ronwen, Arthur, Merlin, and Cadwallader catalyzed an extraordinarily long-lived, popular, and influential tradition, playing a key role in the development of Arthurian literature and English historiography right into the seventeenth century, with works running from the realm’s remote “legendary” origins to Brut continuators’ own times.
Under the auspices of the International Lawman’s Brut Society and the University of Notre Dame, this four-day conference aims to promote fruitful conversation among scholars working on all aspects of the long historiographic, literary, and artistic Brut tradition. In the heart of New Troy, we seek to provide a forum for comparative, multilingual, cross-period, and cross-disciplinary discussion of Brut-related works and manuscripts, both canonical and less familiar, and by no means limited to “legendary” material.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers on the Brut tradition from all disciplines, including medieval and early modern languages and literatures, and art, book, cultural, intellectual, political, religious, or any other kind of history. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- The present and the renovation of the past in Brut texts
- The role of the city in Brut texts
- Ideas of “Britain”: nation, religion, geography, and history
- Travel and migration in Brut texts and by its manuscripts
- Multilingualism and the languages of the Brut tradition (Dutch, English, French, Irish, Italian, Latin, Norse, Scots, Spanish, Welsh . . . )
- Bruts across borders (political, theological, temporal, physical, linguistic, generic . . .)
- Medieval and post-medieval authorship, reception, and transmission of Brut texts and manuscripts
- Bruts and technologies old and new (manuscript, print, digital media)
Please send abstracts of <300 words, with full contact information and specification of audiovisual needs, to organizers Julia Marvin and Jaclyn Rajsic at brutinnewtroy2020@gmail.com. Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2019.
This conference is made possible by generous support from the Department of English, the Medieval Institute, the Program of Liberal Studies, and the Henkels Fund, Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame.
