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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 710: (Un)Bound Bodies: Consolidating and Fragmenting Borders, III

Tuesday 7 July 2020, 14.15-15.45

Organiser:Lauren Rozenberg, Department of History of Art, University College London
Moderator/Chair:Lauren Rozenberg, Department of History of Art, University College London
Paper 710-aCastrating Ovid: Christine de Pisan and the Medieval Ovidian Body
(Language: English)
Rebecca Menmuir, Faculty of English University of Oxford
Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Sexuality
Paper 710-bMy Body, My Choice?: Consent and Commodification of the Female Holy Body in 13th-Century Hagiography
(Language: English)
Lydia Marie Walker, Department of History, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Index terms: Hagiography, Women's Studies
Paper 710-cEnclosure and the Body, or, Delation, Punishment, and the Scopophilic Eye in Cligès, the 'Berenger au lonc cul', and 'Castia gilos'
(Language: English)
Alani Hicks-Bartlett, Department of French Studies Brown University
Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Women's Studies
Abstract

Bodily mutilation - real or imagined - represents a visceral example of the unbinding of the body. Papers in this session approach mutilation through the lens of castration, bodily relics, and torture. An examination of Christine de Pizan's Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, Chrétien de Troyes's Cligès and the hagiographies of Marie d'Oignies and Hadewijch reveal that the body, and particularly the female body, served as a contested space. As a locus for empowerment or disempowerment, the enforcement or self-infliction of disfigurement, these texts show how medieval bodies, and damage the wrought upon them, both strengthened and abused bodily identity.