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Biannual Conference

2018: Truth and Truthiness

Truth and Truthiness: Belief, Authenticity, Rhetoric, and Spin in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

December 1, 2018

The 26th Biennial Conference of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program of Barnard College

Plenary Speakers:

Lorna Hutson (University of Oxford)
Dyan Elliott (Northwestern University)

allegory-of-eloquence

The capacity of language both to communicate truth and to manipulate perceptions of it was as vexed a problem for the Middle Ages and Renaissance as it is today. From Augustine to Erasmus, enthusiasm for the study of rhetoric was accompanied by profound concern about its capacity to mask the difference between authenticity and deceit, revelation and heresy, truth and truthiness. Even the claim of authenticity or transparency could become, some thinkers argued, a deliberate form of manipulation or “spin.” In our current era when public figures aim to create effects of immediacy and authenticity, this conference looks at the history of debates about rhetoric and, more generally, about the presentation of transparency and truthfulness. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this conference considers the role of the verbal arts in the history of literature, law, politics, theology, and historiography, but also broadens the scope of rhetoric to include such topics as the rhetoric of the visual arts and the language of the new science to produce effects of objective access to “things themselves.”

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM
Saturday, December 1, 2018
All sessions held in Barnard Hall, 3009 Broadway, NYC

 

8-9
Registration and Breakfast

 

9-10
Plenary I: Held Lecture Hall
Introduction: Joel Kaye, Barnard College

  • Dyan Elliott, Northwestern University: The Art of Misdirection: Clerical Perspectives on Sodomy in the High Middle Ages

      
10:15-11:45
Session A
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
Chair: Laurie Postlewate, Barnard College
Held Lecture Hall

  • Kathy Eden, Columbia University: Signs of the Times in Petrarch’s Sources of Truth
  • Kira von Ostenfeld-Suske, Huntington: Humanist History, Truth, and Polemics: The Artes Historicae of Philip II’s Official Historians
  • Sarah H. Beckjord, Boston College: Performing “Spin” in the Comentarios reales

Session B
TRUE STORIES
Chair: Benjamin Breyer, Barnard College
Barnard Hall 302

  • Kathleen Loysen, Montclair State University: True Stories: Constructing Images of Authority in the French Renaissance Tale
  • Alani Hicks-Bartlett, New York University: “Charlemagne’s Lie(s) and the Deterioration of Truth in Orlando furioso: Ariosto’s Renegotiation of the Chanson de Roland, Pulci, and Boiardo
  • Marian Rothstein, Carthage (professor emerita): The Conundrum of Annius of Viterbo’s Forgeries for France

 

12-1
LUNCH
James Room
 

1-2
Plenary II
Held Lecture Hall
Introduction: Rachel Eisendrath, Barnard College

  • Lorna Hutson, University of Oxford: England’s Insular Imaginings
     

2:15-3:45
Session C
PLAYING GAMES WITH WORDS
Chair: Peter Platt, Barnard College
Held Lecture Hall

  • Joel Kaye, Barnard College: A Great Philosopher Plays the Shell Game
  • Jenny Mann, Cornell University: Can a Fiction Pretend to Lie?: More’s Utopia, the Liar’s Paradox, and the Imitation Game
  • Jeff Dolven, Princeton University: The Devices of Sundry Gentlemen

Session D
WHAT DO YOU KNOW: THE PERFORMANCE OF KNOWLEDGE AND PROBLEMS OF EPISTEMOLOGY
Chair: Orlando Bentancor, Barnard College
Barnard Hall 302

  • Lauren Robertson, Columbia University: Hamlet’s “Experiment”: Knowledge, Performance, and the Play-Within
  • Katie Lindeman, Tel Aviv University: Constructing the Catholic True Man: Masculinity, Authenticity, and Medieval Inquisition
  • Jake Purcell, Columbia University: Anti-Skepticism and Merovingian Epistemology

Session E
THE TRUTHINESS OF THE BODY
Chair: Gregory Bryda, Barnard College
Barnard Hall 409

  • Laura Levine, New York University: Judicial Procedure as counter-magic in Malleus Maleficarum
  • Jessica Maratsos, Cambridge University: Fractured Body/Fragmented Presence: Rosso Fiorentino in Rome
  • Seth Stewart Williams, Barnard College: Equivocal Bodies: English Recusants, Gesture, and Dance

 

4-5:30
Session F
THE AUTHENTICITY EFFECT
Chair: Christopher Baswell, Barnard and Columbia
Barnard Hall 409

  • Karen Sullivan, Bard College: Medieval Sincerity and the ‘Reality Effect’: Did Troubadours Love Their Ladies?
  • Lauren Mancia, Brooklyn College: Credo: Did Medieval Monks Really Believe?
  • Deborah Fraioli, Simmons University (professor emerita): The Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise: The Story that Lies Within

Session G
MAPPING POWER
Chair: Orlando Bentancor, Barnard College
Barnard Hall 302

  • Ryan E. Gregg, Webster University: The Rhetoric of City Views: Anton van den Wyngaerde’s Genoa as Argument for Charles V’s Hegemony
  • Jessica Maier, Mount Holyoke College: News, Real and Fake, from the Front: Mapping the Great Siege of Malta
  • Juan Carlos Garzon Mantilla, Columbia University: “Ancient Cosmographers Varied and Erred”: Early Modern Global Literacy Debated from the New World

 

5:30-6:30
Wine and Cheese Reception

Questions?
Contact Rachel Eisendrath, reisendr@barnard.edu