IMC 2014: Sessions
Session 708: Women and the Empirical: Language, Belief, and Sensory Perception, I
Tuesday 8 July 2014, 14.15-15.45
| Sponsor: | Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship |
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| Organiser: | Liz Herbert McAvoy, Department of English Language & Literature, Swansea University |
| Moderator/Chair: | Liz Herbert McAvoy, Department of English Language & Literature, Swansea University |
| Paper 708-a | Lavish Lovers and Launfal's Male Gazing: The Creation of Sensory Delight in Chestre's 14th-Century Sir Launfal (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Women's Studies |
| Paper 708-b | Interaction between the Emotional and the Physical in Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - German, Women's Studies |
| Paper 708-c | Pricked by the Rose: The Significance of Le Roman de la Rose Imagery in Christine de Pizan's Querelle (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - General, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Sexuality |
| Abstract | Women's relation to the empirical in the Middle Ages is a topic that has long been under debate: traditionally it has been assumed that women were associated with the emotions and the body, whilst men allied themselves to the rational and the spirit. Recent feminist recuperations, however, have challenged this reductive binary, with much interest having been directed at the notion of 'truth', for example, as expounded by, say, Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, Margery Kempe or Julian of Norwich within an 'English' tradition of women's writing. Further afield, Anneke Mulder-Bakker has demonstrated a clear interplay between men, women, the emotional and the rational in the religious milieux of the Low Countries in the Middle Ages, whilst Sarah McNamer has challenged accepted views of the male monastic origins of late medieval affective devotional activities, pointing towards a far more nuanced interactive collaboration between medieval women and men, and between emotional and intellectual responses to both the worldly and the divine. |