CFP, Reassessing Boundaries: Chaucer and Medieval European Literatures at NCS 2018

Call for Submissions:
Paper Panel for the 2018 New Chaucer Society Congress 
Organizer: Shazia Jagot, jagot@sdu.dk

Reassessing Boundaries: Chaucer and Medieval European Literatures

From Mongol Sarai and Muslim Syria to Castilian kings, Persian polymaths, and crusading arenas that stretch from the Baltic to North Africa, Chaucer’s literary imagination spans geographies and cultures that are often considered to lie beyond the boundaries of “Europe.” This panel seeks to explore and interrogate the notion of “Europe” in relation to such perceived peripheral places in the age of Chaucer from a historical cross-cultural perspective: how are boundaries conceived, contested and/or imagined in relation to intellectual, scientific, cultural and literary exchanges? How can we compare/connect places, ideas and texts? What makes something “European?” Papers may address any aspect of such cross-cultural contact, particularly in light of new critical approaches to the concept of Medieval European Literatures, such as those formulated by David Wallace and outlined in a recent issue of Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures.