This conference will explore the interconnection between literature, medicine, and theology throughout the Middle Ages. Possible texts for exploration include prayers, charms, narratives of illness and health, medical manuals, texts of contemplation and religious instruction, devotional materials, accounts of conversion and healing, saints lives and prognostications, and texts that evoke and direct the emotions in Old and Middle English.
Possible topics for exploration include the ideas of narrative medicine; medieval poetic theory; the arts of grammar and rhetoric; medical manuscripts and medical humanities; science and literature; the medicalised body; the humors; the impact of the plague on the poetic imagination; the use of words to heal; the power of rhythm, metre, and cursus; and the connections between sin and sickness, and heaven and health during this period.
