Dr Gaelle Bosseman (University of Rennes 2)
University of Sydney
12.10pm – 1.30pm | VGCC Boardroom
(and Zoom)
As climate disasters become more frequent and tensions rise between major powers, there are numerous discourses announcing and describing the imminent end of our world. From newspaper articles to scientific discourse, artistic works and science fiction, apocalyptic prophecies fuel a critical reading of contemporary societies.
Thoughts of the end of the world are not unique to Western societies. Nor are they the product of a particular era, as they have appeared repeatedly throughout history.
However, in our imagination, the Middle Ages seem to have been a period particularly marked by an anxious expectation of the end of time, especially during times of crisis such as the sack of Rome, the Crusades, and the Black Death of the 14th century. This idea is particularly evident in the success of the Apocalypse in the cultural, artistic and intellectual productions of the Middle Ages, such as the Beatus (illuminated commentaries on the Apocalypse copied in the Iberian Peninsula between the 10th and 13th centuries) or the tapestry on the Apocalypse of Angers (ca. 1380-82).
By studying some of these works, we will revisit the functions and uses of medieval eschatological discourse and show that then, as now, thinking about and representing the end of time is above all a way of saying something about the present.
About the speaker:Gaelle Bosseman is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Rennes 2 since 2023. Her research focuses on medieval eschatological and apocalyptic discourses in texts and images. After completing her thesis in 2019 on the link between discourse on the end of time and the Islamic presence in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages, Gaelle Bosseman has continued her research into medieval eschatology, exploring its dual nature as both scholarly knowledge and a belief system in the medieval West. Her work is based on the material study of manuscripts.
| Venue & Zoom information Zoom link here. Password: 611971 Venue: VGCC Boardroom, level 4, Madsen Building. Contact: Please contact Niro Kandasamy or James Findlay for more information: niro.kandasamy@sydney.edu.au or james.findlay@sydney.edu.au Seminar image: Unsplash |
