Subtheme:
Scandalous In/Authenticity

In response to the conference theme, this thread invites panels and papers that consider moments in medieval literature and culture in which authenticity or inauthenticity becomes a site of scandal, concern, or disruption. Such moments of epistemic crisis inevitably raise foundational questions about perception, the nature of truth, and social norms and cohesion. 

 

Recent work on authenticity and inauthenticity has considered the complicated relationship between the concept of the “original” and the “forgery” respectively, emphasizing their mutually constitutive status. What can we learn about structures of meaning-making in and about the Middle Ages by considering instances disputed, ambiguous, or contested authenticity? 

 

Papers might consider these issues within a range of frameworks, including:

• the textual (canon, attribution, translation, apocrypha and pseudepigrapha)

• the ludic (disguise, performance, impostors)

• the religious (discernment, heresy and orthodoxy, relics)

• the aesthetic (artifice, imitation, copying)

• the moral (forgery, hypocrisy, deceit)

• the political (public attitude, accountability, narrative, sovereignty, succession)

 

We also welcome proposals that consider questions of authenticity and inauthenticity in the Middle Ages diachronically, whether by looking to medieval ideas about the biblical and classical past, or to post-medieval explorations of the Middle Ages through medievalism, historiography, or even hoax.