Subtheme:
Fictions of Resistance & Refuge
Organizers: Clint Morrison Jr. (University of Texas at Austin) and Jonathan F. Correa Reys (Clemson University)
Resistance and Refuge reside alongside each other in contemporary fictions. In modern media, franchises like Star Wars create fictions of resistance in shows like Andor and across films; refuge receives similar treatment. These fictions do little more than paint a picture of a resistance without dissent, conversation, or stakes beyond initial victory while promising an ever-safe refuge as long as one does not leave the confines of the narrative. In this session, we invite papers that consider how medieval texts create fictions of resistance and refuge.
​
Moments of resistance abound in the medieval world. Defiance to foreign occupation, urban uprisings, revolts by dissatisfied peasants, and movements responding to religious corruption are just some examples of how resistance manifested in the Middle Ages. Naturally, ideas of resistance impacted literary production. Medieval authors often took positions for or against the resistance movements of their time.
​
This session seeks to build on scholarship analyzing ideations of resistance and refuge in the Middle Ages. Nearly thirty years ago, Claire Sponsler’s Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods, and Theatricality in Late Medieval England examined the “cultural fictions that served as mechanisms for controlling the human body and its insertion into systems of production and consumption." To be certain, medieval narratives were deployed as aides to oppressive systems by providing narrative frameworks to unjust ideologies and practices. However, cultural fictions also allowed authors to envision different circumstances, to imagine the world as it should be. It is in this sense that we speak of fictions of refuge.
​
We invite papers that think through different ideations of resistance and refuge across the medieval world. How were the embodied experiences of resistance and the rhetoric disparate? How do these stories homogenize participants of resistance? How do they oversimplify or complicate the relief of refuge? What narrative forms are conducive to resistance? And to refuge? What roles did sexuality, race, or status play in communal responses to resistance and refuge? How do modern fictions project onto our reading of medieval resistance and refuge?
