After my recent book discovering the identity and landscape of the Gawain-poet (aka The Pearl-poet), I’m interested in Sir Gawain as a classic English supernatural text. It seems that others are too…

The International Pearl-Poet Society is sponsoring six sessions at the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies (9th–12th May 2019) at Western Michigan University. Session Five is: “Fifty Shades of Green: Hagiography and Demonology in the Pearl-poet Corpus”.

“Between the celestial city and the shady Green Chapel, the miracles of a London bishop and the Leviathan-underworld in the belly of a sea beast, the works of the Pearl-poet [aka the Gawain-poet] explore the full range of the divine and the infernal. The papers in this session will interrogate the poet’s use of hagiographic tropes [trans: the extraordinary aspects expected to be possessed by saints and related supernatural beings] as well as material from folk traditions as he crafts his supernatural narratives.”

Deadline: 15th September 2018. Looks like it’s one of those where you have to be there in person to give the paper, rather than delivering by video-feed.


In a more fannish vein there’s also a call for submissions for The Realm of British Folklore anthology. Deadline is Halloween 2018. Wanted is poetry, fiction and art, all of the non-twee variety and relating to aspects of British folklore.