It is perhaps perverse to claim that anything good could have come out of the Covid years, but they prompted the development of facilities like Zoom, and without this and similar online options for virtual participation I would never have been able to experience the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo (ICMS). I was so grateful to everyone who made this possible, because I was able to ‘attend’ a number of sessions, other than the one in which my paper was scheduled.
The session, Birthing in Mind and Memory 1, included 2 other papers, both of which surveyed more than one romance, and concentrated on the sense of community created in the birthing chambers depicted in the stories, where midwives and gossips were in evidence, and mothers-in-law created a sense of alienation by their attitudes towards mothers. These papers showed how distinctive the treatment of childbirth is in Bevis and in Boeve, where none of these elements are present, and childbirth references serve complex social, political and cultural agendas. The ‘Mind and Memory’ aspect is of particular interest in the case of the relationship between the thirteenth-century Boeve and the Auchinleck MS version of Bevis dating from the 1330s, i.e. the earliest extant Middle English version.
There is more work to be done to develop this, indeed, there is a great deal of work to be done in all the areas I have so far investigated, and I look forward to getting back to my research as soon as other matters permit.
Sir Bevis of Hampton - Local Hero 