IMC 2006: Sessions

Session 1606: Instructing Gestures: Welsh Insult, Angry Englishmen, and Mendicant Advice

Thursday 13 July 2006, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:	Canadian Journal of History
Organiser:	Sharon Wright, Classics, Medieval & Renaissance Studies, University of Saskatchewan
Moderator/Chair:	Frank Klaassen, Department of History, University of Saskatchewan
Paper 1606-a	Gesture and Insult in Medieval Welsh Prose (Language: English) Michael Cichon, Department of English, St Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan Index terms: Language and Literature - Celtic, Social History
Paper 1606-b	Tossing the Wife’s Pots and Pans: Anger and Male Gesture in Feminine Space (Language: English) Sharon Wright, Classics, Medieval & Renaissance Studies, University of Saskatchewan Index terms: Gender Studies, Sermons and Preaching, Social History
Paper 1606-c	Mendicant Depictions of God’s Wrath against the Wrathful (Language: English) Marc B. Cels, Saint Michael's College, University of Toronto Index terms: Folk Studies, Sermons and Preaching, Social History
Abstract	This panel is concerned with the process through which anger (God’s just anger, human wrath and vengeance) was expressed through gesture. 'Instructing gestures' are interpreted as both didactic and signifying. Textual and visual descriptions of anger instruct the medieval audience; gesture itself is instructive of the moment at which anger has become transgressive. Cels demonstrates how mendicant descriptions of God’s vengeance against the wrathful operate in conformity with folk theories about expressed emotion. Using vernacular treatises on vice, Wright explores how male wrathful gestures reduce and feminize men. Cichon examines the image of sarhaed (insult) in MS Peniarth 28, and the interplay between gesture, insult, and redress in Welsh law.