THE LAW AND THE OUTLAW

The concepts of law and outlawry, working in counterpoint throughout the Middle Ages, excite the interest of scholars in a number of disciplines. We propose a session (or possibly sessions) to explore the close connections between those who are "in" law and those thrust outside the law. We welcome proposals for papers from scholars interested in the specifics of legal conceptions and processes, but also from those interested in particular historical outlaws or in outlaws creatively imagined in Medieval literature. Some possible lines of inquiry follow, though we welcome your suggestions.

Examples of topics:

• Being "in" law, or possessing one's law (lex) is a gendered notion. A man can be worthy of his law in the early middle

ages; it is one of the ways to signal that he is fully free and participating in political life. But we know of no texts concerning
the law-worthy woman. Women were indeed outlawed in England into the twelfth century. After that time, when a woman
was proscribed and awarded all the penalties of outlawry, she was said to be “waived” and called a "waif". Was this because
of a change in the law about "law" due, say, to the 1166 Assize of Clarendon? Was there any comparable shift of terminology
or sentiment elsewhere, on the Continent?

• What range of meaning attaches to the term law in literary works? Does it more often encompass a way of life identified
  with religion, rather than a legal status within the realm?

• Does it relate to the emerging ordines of society (the "law" of the milites, for example)?

• What is the truth about the equation of outlawry with "wearing the wolf’s head"? Eternal open season for killing wolves
  and outlaws, perhaps?

• The very etymology of the Forest hints at an obvious association with outlawry and exclusion. Why forest rather than
  desert, as with monks? Whence the Brocéliande connection?

• Why are creative writers so attracted by outlaws and the Greenwood? Is this just a late medieval theme? If not, where do
  we find the earlier analogs to Robin Hood and the rest?

• Does outlawry draw on other notions of exclusion such as the Old Norse "nithing"? In what ways does it perhaps influence excommunication ( or De excommunicato capiendo), anathemas and cursing, or even the expulsions (exterminatio!) of
  Jews and other outsiders?

• How do issues of law and outlawry help to determine the action of romances? Are the representations close to actual legal development or do they stand at some imaginative distance?

Paul Hyams, History Dept., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-4601, prh3@cornell.edu

Richard Kaeuper, Dept of History University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 rkpr@uhura.cc.rochester.edu