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IMC 2021: Sessions

Session 2218: Social Climate and Cosmology in England and France

Friday 9 July 2021, 14.15-15.45

Moderator/Chair:Emma Cayley, Department of Modern Languages, University of Exeter
Paper 2218-aThe Wind of Change: Zephyr as an Engineer of Character Development in Perceforest
(Language: English)
Coline Blaizeau, Centre for Medieval Studies University of Exeter
Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Mentalities, Philosophy
Paper 2218-bChaucer's Waste Land: Dantean Contingency and Cosmology in the House of Fame
(Language: English)
Peter Buchanan, Faculty of English Language & Literature, University of Oxford
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Mentalities, Philosophy
Paper 2218-cA Medieval Climate Study: Taking the Pulse of 15th-Century French Society with a Focus on Gender Perspective
(Language: English)
Anne M. E. Caillaud, Department of Modern Languages & Literatures, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - French or Occitan
Paper 2218-dMocking Metaphysics: Subverting Climates of Hierarchy and Prestige in French Scholastic Parody
(Language: English)
Bryant White, Department of French & Italian, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Philosophy, Rhetoric, Social History
Abstract

Paper -a:
Perceforest is a late medieval romance in French which uses marvels and their problematic relationship with reality to reflect on the intrinsic limits of human perception/cognition. Its protagonists are continuously faced with the signs of their own fallibility, which they can accept or deny. The knight Estonné is, perhaps, the most proud and stubborn of them all. His journey towards self-awareness therefore requires no less than the intervention of Zephyr, a fallen angel whose constant trickery is the driving force behind Estonné's growth. As such, Zephyr can be seen as an avatar of the author-narrator who seeks to educate on the shortcomings of empirical knowledge.

Paper -b:
Chaucer's House of Fame envisions poets and readers in a post-truth wasteland, an ontological exile where narratives of 'fals and soth compouned' are exponentially 'encresing evere moo'. While Fame's interactions with Dante have been widely researched, the importance of Dantean cosmology for Chaucer's conception of the contingency of language has not been properly articulated. This paper argues that Fame's epistemic wasteland, where untruth multiplies as discourse proliferates through the temporal world, critically responds to Convivio I - III and Paradiso XII/XIII, which source our climate of contingency (brevi contingenze) to mediality itself, the transmission of discourse through strata of temporal mediators.

Paper -c:
Climate surveys have become a popular tool to assess the quality of our lives and experiences. They provide an opportunity for individuals to state, anonymously and without fear of reprisals, what is amiss or not working in the system. The goal of a climate survey is to improve work or living conditions and help uncover bias or hostility towards marginalized groups. The ensuing climate study seeks to identify a series of resolutions and hopefully help bring out necessary changes. The Distaffs Gospels which dates from the end of the 15th century, is presented as a compilation of common women's oral testimonies. Because they are illiterate, the female speakers hire a male scribe to write down their words of wisdom with the goal to put an end to men's ongoing disparagement. This text is, however, written in the same anti-feminist vein as the popular fabliaux. It fails to vindicate its patrons but offers a wealth of information on the lifestyle and the trials of women in the 15th century. It provides the age, gender, professions, and civil status of its participants. It lists their concerns and needs. It brings up cases of abuse and neglect that even the sarcastic tone of the male scribe cannot completely dismiss. This paper will draw striking parallels between a modern-day climate survey and the Distaffs Gospels and show how, in the context of a climate survey, the women's discourse becomes invaluable qualitative data that informs our perception of women's experience and plays an important role in developing a richer understanding of a climate charged with prejudice and detrimental to women.

Paper -d:
While medieval comic studies often evoke parodia sacra, this paper will survey a little-studied tradition of parodia scholastica via a selection of 12th to 15th-century French texts that parody scholastic theological and philosophical discourse in its thorough study of metaphysical minutiae. Beginning with an unlikely source in a passage from Chrétien de Troyes' Cligès and moving through several texts from various comic genres (such as fabliaux and sermons joyeux), this paper will contend that scholastic parody subtly critiques an intellectual and cultural climate of rigid learned/unlearned hierarchies. Moreover, through heteroglossia and the use of pseudo-Latin, certain texts even upend hierarchies of linguistic prestige. Deconstructing such binaries by ridiculing scholastic modes of reasoning and writing, scholastic parody contributes to the clash of social climates (i.e., authority structures vs. 'popular culture') described in Bakhtinian analysis through the instrumentality of the learned themselves.