Earlier this year, Matt Lampitt (Project PDRA) spoke at the Mortimer History Society’s Spring Conference on the topic of ‘Imagining Landscapes in Medieval Ludlow’. The talk is available on their Youtube channel here:
Abstract
From greenwood glades harbouring beastly outlaws to Welsh forest passes exploited by rebellious lords to seas that shelter castaway exiles, literary texts from the medieval Welsh Marches imagine worlds full of vibrant land- and seascapes. Ranging across texts in Latin, English, and French, this paper focusses on the works copied and rewritten by the so-called ‘Harley scribe’, an elusive figure active in and around Ludlow in the first half of the fourteenth century. In texts such as the Song of Trailbaston, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, and Kyng Horn, land- and seascapes are no mere backdrop to the main action; rather, they act on their narrative worlds in politically meaningful ways, often colluding with the heroes in their resistance to unjust foes. Situating these texts in their manuscript contexts, we will explore the agential environments that they imagine and consider further what it means for such texts to elaborate political ecologies that include, but are by no means limited to, the human.