IMC 2012: Sessions

What where the rules and norms associated with the gendered, female body and the social role of women in early medieval Europe? The papers approach this question from three different, original angles. Helen Oxenham investigates the similarities and differences between the activities in which women were expected to engage according to the Irish laws and saints' lives compiled between the 5th and the 9th centuries. Nicola Edelmann's paper approaches the problem from a 'reversed' perspective: it attempts to reconstruct the rules that governed the portrayal of a negative model of female sexual and marital conduct. Its starting point is the figure of Marozia (successive wife of Alberich I., Guido of Tuscia and Hugh of Italy). Considering medieval sources and later texts, it explores the consistency of the accusations brought against her and her incestous ways since Luidprand of Cremona. Are there rules for depicting such an allegedly promiscuous woman - and is it possible to develop a positive context for Marozia? The final paper by Meg Leja broadens the perspective and investigates the norms, rules and assumptions regarding the body, its physicality, and its functions as they can be reconstructed from the often neglected medical texts of the Carolingian period. It investigates the ways in which the body was understood to function, the ideal means of governing the body, and the guiding principles and social agenda of the medical texts. From these different angles, each of the three papers offers insights into the discourses that regulated the (female) body, its uses and its social meanings in the early middle Ages.