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IMC 2017: Sessions

Session 721: Eating Others: Symbolic and Actual Anthropophagy towards Other Human Groups in Medieval Storytelling

Tuesday 4 July 2017, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Centre d'Études sur le Moyen Âge et la Renaissance, Université catholique de Louvain
Organiser:Antonella Sciancalepore, Centre d'études sur le Moyen Âge et la Renaissance, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve
Moderator/Chair:Antonella Sciancalepore, Centre d'études sur le Moyen Âge et la Renaissance, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve
Paper 721-aThe Skull-Cup Motif in the Old French Lorraine Cycle between Intertextuality and Ethnography
(Language: English)
Gabriele Sorice, Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia, Università degli Studi di Trento
Index terms: Anthropology, Language and Literature - French or Occitan
Paper 721-bEating Your Lover's Otherness: The Narrative Theme of the Coeur Mangé
(Language: English)
Amy Suzanne Heneveld, Département de langues et littératures françaises et latines médiévales, Université de Génève
Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Sexuality, Women's Studies
Paper 721-cEating Enemy, Eating Sins: Anthropophagy in the Eracles Italian Vulgarization
(Language: English)
Pantalea Mazzitello, Independent Scholar, Parma
Index terms: Crusades, Language and Literature - Italian
Abstract

While medieval fiction and travel writing teem with cannibal monsters, only few texts show Western characters performing real or symbolic cannibalism on a perceived Other. However rare, this 'European' cannibalism had great emotional and conceptual power in medieval texts, where it shuffled civilisation/savagery boundaries and staged control and incorporation of otherness. This session explores the topic across Romance storytelling, by investigating symbolic cannibalism in French epic songs, ritual cannibalism in French romance, and wartime cannibalism in Italian Crusade chronicles. By highlighting their intersections with coeval texts and their anthropological implications, these papers aim to restore the narrative significance of these episodes as ambiguous places of negotiation of the Other and its body.