2025 has been a year in which the contemporary world has seen immense geopolitical shifts and generational changes. Cultural fault lines globally have deepened and been exploited cynically by a wide variety of different individuals, organisations, and companies. Communities have simultaneously splintered and closed off from outsiders. Institutions and public edifices are being hollowed out at a breakneck speed, even as ever more people rely on their existence and protection. Many would see evidence of a destabilising dystopia threatening to emerge in the not too distant future, while others would argue that for many communities – under attack from without and from within – that that state has already come to pass.
But a dystopia is, of course, just the other side of the coin from a utopia. The very things which cause distress and disgust for some, form the basis of the dreams, visions, and utopias of others. This was equally true historically in the medieval and early modern periods, when times of crisis and their aftermath arguably resulted in greater emphasis on individual and collective visions.
Ceræ’s twelfth volume features four articles and fifteen book reviews which collectively explore some of the visions and developments evident within society in the later medieval and early modern periods. Kyna Noelle Bullard details shifting attitudes to healers and witchcraft in the Iberian peninsula; Elisabeth Genter Montevecchio provides an analysis of the figure of the serpent-woman in literary, theological, and alchemical sources; Dunja Haufe explores an ecocritical comparative reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Green Knight; finally, Agustín Méndez documents the demonically possessed in the New World in order to uncover their emotional experiences. The fifteen works reviewed include English and Italian books reviewed by a diverse range of scholars from fourteen different institutions, each at varying stages of their academic careers.
Each contribution to Volume 12 is available as an individual PDF, and the volume in its entirety is available at the Volume 12 page here:
Volume 12: Dreams, Visions, and Utopias
If you wish to submit your own research to Ceræ, our annual call for themed submissions for both Volume 13 and the annual conference will open very shortly, before the end of this month. We also accept non-themed submissions year round, and the editorial committee would be more than happy to discuss your proposal. Please visit our submission page for more information on how to prepare your submission.
We hope you enjoy this volume of Ceræ!
Image credit: Dream of the three Magi, c. 1020, Gospels, Anon; London BL Royal 1 D X, fol-2v.