IMC 2022: Sessions
Session 732: Transgressing Boundaries, I: Women's Agency in Medieval Literature
Tuesday 5 July 2022, 14.15-15.45
| Organiser: | Emily McLemore, Department of English, University of Notre Dame, Indiana |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Emily McLemore, Department of English, University of Notre Dame, Indiana |
| Paper 732-a | The Intricate Patterns and Pitfalls of Female Mediation in Late Medieval Dream Poetry (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Women's Studies |
| Paper 732-b | Models of Female Agency in Fin'amor Literature (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Sexuality, Women's Studies |
| Paper 732-c | Isolde: Female Hero, Heroine, or Counter-Hero? (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Other, Sexuality, Women's Studies |
| Abstract | This session explores medieval women's transgression of traditional gendered boundaries by examining the ways in which women are confined to set of sociohistorical expectations and highlighting how women in literature of the period push against the standards that strive to define and limit them. The women analyzed in this series of papers express agency in ways that extend beyond heteronormative configurations of power. The papers displace pervasive treatments of women in medieval literature as passive and pliant, a long-standing narrative that reduces the scope of women's counterhegemonic activity and their procurement of power. |