Conference: The Historical English Analysis and Research Tradition (HEART)

The Historical English Analysis and Research Tradition (HEART) Conference aims to gather specialists in English mediaeval language, literature, and culture. It will be held in person 11-12.04.2025 at the Faculty of Modern Languages in Warsaw. It offers a platform for interdisciplinary exchange on the research methods and new interpretations of the materials dated up to 1700.

Keynote speakers include: Jan Čermák (Charles University, Prague), Tamás Karáth (Comenius University, Bratislava and Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest) i Thijs Porck (Leiden University).

The conference will feature a special thematic session on manuscripts including a guest lecture by Jane Toswell (Western University, Canada) entitled The layouts of vernacular psalters in early medieval England and an exhibition of manuscript fragments and artefacts connected with the N-Psalter Project.

The first HEART conference commemorates the one-thousandth anniversary of the coronation of Bolesław the Brave, the first crowned king of Poland, which took place probably in April, 1025 in Gniezno.

Bolesław the Brave, like Saint Stephen I of Hungary, belonged to the generation of kings who established the foundations of Central Europe. Canute the Great, the king of England, Denmark, and Norway, and possibly Bolesław’s nephew, epitomizes the common fate of the peoples from the northern part of the continent. The reigns of these great kings had an impact on political history but also on the development of the culture, literature, and languages of nations that still exist today.

The now-lost crown of Bolesław the Brave, as well as the crown of Saint Stephen, kept in Budapest, are symbols of fate and aspirations of the countries of Central Europe – the Middle Kingdoms, as they were called by the British historian Martin Rady.

This historical perspective underlies our ambition to bring into contact the various perspectives on medievalist research in the field of linguistics as well as literary and cultural studies simultaneously emphasising the continuity and distinctive nature of collective academic achievement in Poland and the whole of central Europe.