This conference invites a conversation about the varied ways in which a concern with ethics – however that may have been construed at different times and places throughout the period– entered into a fruitful relationship with artistic production. It looks, in short, to discover the manifold ways in which medieval artists, thinkers, and writers reconciled “The Good” and “The Beautiful.” We wish to throw this conversation open to emerging scholars across the disciplines, including those whose work falls outside of standard conceptions of “the medieval”-- that is, outside the Latin West.

Questions addressed might include, but will not be limited to:

• The context and formal strategies of didactic art, such as allegorical pieces;
• Medieval debates about the ethical status of art, particularly secular aesthetic production;
• Contradictions (or congruities) between medieval theory and medieval praxis;
• The development of new models of aesthetic production in the vernacular;
• Prescriptive codes of conduct in secular or religious contexts (for example, chivalry/courtliness, debates about clothing and fashion, or grammatical treatises), and subversion or flaws in performance of these;
• The evocation of these categories in constructing modern medievalisms.

Submit abstracts of no more than 500 words to medieval.ethics.aesthetics at gmail.com by November 20, 2014.