The 2024 SASMARS Conference, 1 to 4 August 2024
Post-Conference Update
The 26th Biennial International Conference of the Southern African Society of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS) took place during the first weekend of August at the Mont Fleur Conference Venue in the Western Cape. We welcomed many South African and international scholars, including Professor Andrew Breeze from the University of Navarra as the 2024 keynote speaker.
Stellenbosch’s weather did not disappoint and we were treated to sunshine and mild temperatures from the time of arrival on Thursday, and with the rain and cold only returning on the last day of the conference. (The photo below was taken on the first day of the conference.)
The theme for the 2024 conference, “Beneath the surface,” led to a wonderful selection of papers on diverse subjects and texts, starting with Breeze’s keynote, “The Celtic Other World and Old English Orosius” on Friday morning.
Various long-term members of the Society attended the conference, covering a range of texts and subjects; from Doctor Faustus and the Middle Dutch Mariken van Nieumeghen, to sixteenth-century sacred music:
Catherine Addison, Tithonus’ death-wish in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (University of Zululand)
Jac Conradie, The expression of underlying emotion in the Middle Dutch miracle/mystery play Mariken van Nieumeghen (University of Johannesburg)
Michèle Du Plessis-Hay, ‘That gown going off…’: John Donne’s ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’ (North-West University)
Antony Goedhals, ‘St. Patrick’s Purgatory’: a source for the ‘pit of helle’ in The Parson’s Tale (University of Pretoria)
George King, What lies beneath: Appropriation and repurposing in sixteenth-century sacred music (UNISA)
Idette Noomé, Blasphemous bluster? Abusing Scripture in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (University of Pretoria)
David Scott-Macnab, Beneath the mastery: Human–animal relations and animal communication as depicted in Medieval handbooks on hunting and falconry (North-West University, Potchefstroom University)
The conference also welcomed six local and international postgrad students, for some of whom this was their first academic conference:
Caitlin Ford, What lies beneath the fur: The humanity of the Medieval werewolf (North-West University)
Giacomo Berchi, The Heavens beneath: Looking downwards and upwards in Dante’s Paradiso (Yale University)
Francesca Leonardi, Beneath the skin: The embodied melancholy of a woman in the ‘Elegy of Madonna Fiammetta’ by Giovanni Boccaccio (Yale University)
Fisokuhle Mbambo, Beneath the warrior’s exterior: What African praise poems can teach us about Sir Gawain’s bravery in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (University of Zululand)
Camilla Norcia, From Thessaly to North Europe: A common mythological underlying stratum (Université de Louvain)
Helena van Urk, ‘The wise would turn from the babble in the squares’: A class-based analysis of Dante’s illustrious vernacular (University of Cambridge)
Other papers by some new – and some not-so-new – delegates and Society members, included appreciation of African coastlines in European travel accounts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, intertextuality in Carolingian poetry, Shakespeare translations in South Africa, and texts that included Paradise Lost, the Old Norse Eddas and sagas, and Bromyard’s Summa Praedicantium:
Lynton Boshoff, What lies beneath the text? Intertextuality with Classical texts in Carolingian poetry (North-West University)
Julia Fernández Cuesta, A syntactic pattern of agreement beneath -s/-th variation in Old Northumbrian? Verbal morphosyntax in Owun’s gloss to the Rushworth Gospels (University of Seville)
Muḥammad Ashraf Dockrat, Beneath wisdom, religious undertones (University of Johannesburg)
Alexander Holland, John Bromyard’s Summa Praedicantium: What lies beneath the sinner’s mask (Independent Scholar)
Carin Marais, ‘The cauldron-liquid of the burden of the gallows’: The mythological knowledge underpinning kennings in Old Norse poetry (Independent Scholar)
Scott Nethersole, Beneath European landscape painting: The appreciation of African coastlines in European travel accounts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Radboud University)
Richard Alan Northover, Altered states of consciousness in Medieval art and literature (University of South Africa)
Frances Ringwood, What lies beneath Satan’s skin in Paradise Lost? (University of Zululand)
Mngadi, Sikhumbuzo, Subtexts: The art of Hans Holbein the Younger and the question of the ‘Modern’ in English Renaissance literature and art (University of Johannesburg)
Chris Thurman, Beneath the story of Shakespeare translations in twentieth-century South Africa (University of the Witwatersrand)
Delegates were also treated to a wine tasting at the neighbouring Keermont vinyard and a guided tour in the Mont Fleur surrounds.
The next SASMARS Conference will be held in 2026 (at Mont Fleur), with the precise dates and theme to be confirmed.
A truly wonderful conference - as always! Thanks to the SASMARS committee, the staff of Mont Fleur, Prof. Andrew Breeze for his wonderful keynote. It was a pleasure to be there with you all, in that most beautiful place.