| Paper 1524-b | Travel and Masculinity in the Mester de Clerecía
(Language: English)
Matthew Desing, Department of Languages & Linguistics, University of Texas, El Paso
Index terms: Gender Studies, Hagiography, Language and Literature - Spanish or Portuguese, Religious Life |
|---|
| Paper 1524-c | Clergy, Laity, and Masculinity in Late Medieval England: Gender in Community Relations
(Language: English)
Derek Neal, Department of History, Nipissing University, Ontario
Index terms: Gender Studies, Religious Life, Social History |
|---|
| Abstract | Paper -a:
Complex issues of gender and identity are raised when the concept of a mystic marriage with Christ is applied to men. In his Horologium Sapientiae, the German mystic Henry Suso describes a marriage to Wisdom, Christ's female alter ego. The few visual depictions of this event present a Dominican monk as Wisdom's bridegroom. Even rarer are visual images of laymen in such a marriage. Two miniatures in French copies of this book depict Christ in his female form wedding the book's patron, in one case Charles VIII, king of France; in the other, his cousin Charles d'Angoulême. This paper will examine these unusual images, their likely source, and their implications.
Paper -b:
From devotional wanderings to secular voyages, travel is a common theme in the 13th-century Spanish verse style known as the mester de clerecía. This paper examines a hagiography, La vida de San Millán de la Cogolla, and the Spanish version of the Apollonius of Tyre legend, El libro de Apolonio, to explore how the protagonists' masculinities fall into disorder during their journeys. Applying theories of the formulation of masculinities and of liminality, this paper explores the repercussions of this authorial move for our understanding of the clerical authorial class that produced these and other poems of this verse style.
Paper -c:
Using evidence from the ecclesiastical courts, this paper outlines a fresh approach to the study of the intersection between religion and social life in late medieval England. The paper represents part of a new research project in which I examine the record of clergymen's interactions with their lay peers in English communities through the lens of masculine identity. I have previously argued that, despite their celibacy, late medieval clergymen inhabited a masculine social identity, probably differing little from that of lay men of the same social status. In this paper I will address a sample of court cases from the late 15th and early 16th centuries in which clergymen's involvement with matters of property, personal reputation, marriage, and sexuality called on them to enact masculine roles, and I will assess the degree to which their clerical status complicated this enactment.
|
|---|
