University Church (above the Vaults and Garden Café), High St, Oxford OX1 4BJ Old Library
Dr Helen Appleton, Career Development Fellow in Old and Early Medieval English, will look at the (sometimes playful) use of architectural images in association with death as a prompt to contrition in the early medieval lyric tradition. It will address questions such as: ‘When the turf is your tower and the pit is your bower, what help to you then are all the world’s joys?’, and will also examine what the worms think about it all.
This is part of a six-part series of talks on the important role that architecture – both physical and representational – played in the imaginative, artistic, and theological life of early medieval England.
Talks will range from the layout and construction of actual early medieval buildings to the symbolic use of architecture in literary texts in order to demonstrate the pervasive importance of architecture in early medieval thought.
