2) Chaucerian Parchment
Paper panel
Scraping away the imagined errors of his scribe, absorbing an array of texts preserved on animal skin, directing his own works’ inscription on membrane folios, signing his name to vellum deeds and depositions: Chaucer’s relation to parchment was a complex if nearly always implicit dimension of his life and literary career. If Ralph Hanna could rightly contend fifteen years ago that “membrane is difficult to interrogate,” advances in the study of the technology, biology, and zooarchaeology of parchment over the last decade suggest it may be time to encourage broader and deeper thinking about the historical, cultural, and economic implications of medieval literature’s primary medium. While the allegorical register of parchment has been much studied (the body as book, writing on human heart and skin, etc.), this session will err on the side of the descriptive and the literal. The parchment inheritance presents a spectrum of topics that merit our scrutiny, from Chaucer’s relation to animal husbandry and butchery to issues of human-animal relations to the micro-economies of urban and rural England. The Icelandic setting of the conference will provide an apt point of entry into such subjects and a helpful point of contrast, as the character of membrane making up most medieval Icelandic manuscripts varies significantly from its insular counterpart, and Icelandic scribes were quite self-conscious about the often stubborn materiality of the medium. Papers on Chaucerian and non-Chaucerian parchment welcome.