| Paper 319-a | Hildegard's Botany: Literary Tradition, Oral Tradition, or Divine Inspiration?
(Language: English)
Helga Ruppe, Department of Modern Languages & Literatures, University of Western Ontario
Index terms: Language and Literature - Comparative, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Medicine, Religious Life |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
Saint Hildegard of Bingen is best known for her visionary writings, but she also wrote two books on physical remedies. This paper focuses on Book I of the Physica, an idiosyncratic list of largely botanical remedies. Focusing on a few representative samples, it will attempt to ascertain whether Hildegard derived her information from earlier written material, from local oral tradition, or - as she herself would claim - from divine inspiration (i.e., she made it up).
Paper -b:
Recent scholarship has posited that the presence of emotions in medieval texts differs distinctly between performative and non-performative texts. The late 12th-century chansons de geste, Ami et Amile, was almost certainly performed, yet the chanson is but one version of the popular legend. Before the composition of the chanson, the tale had already been drafted as a hagiography, a Latin secular narrative, and a Middle English secular narrative. This paper will therefore explore the reception and transmission of this tale and identify how the presence and representation of emotions differ across versions, especially with respect to the nature of each text's orality.
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