IMC 2014: Sessions
Session 808: Women and the Empirical: Language, Belief, and Sensory Perception, II
Tuesday 8 July 2014, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship |
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| Organiser: | Liz Herbert McAvoy, Department of English Language & Literature, Swansea University |
| Moderator/Chair: | Roberta Magnani, Department of English Language & Literature, Swansea University |
| Paper 808-a | Empiricism and Marie de France's Chaitivel (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Women's Studies |
| Paper 808-b | An Intellectual Body: The Collaboration and Making of Saint Bridget of Sweden (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Hagiography, Women's Studies |
| Paper 808-c | Margery Kempe's Daughter-in-Law as Scribe (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Women's Studies |
| 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. |