IMC 2024: Sessions

This session has been grouped by the IMC Programming Committee from individually submitted paper proposals.

Paper a: In the twelfth century, the Abbot Geoffrey de Gorham commissioned a unique psalter for his female acolyte, Christina of Markyate. Three components of the St. Albans Psalter: the pictorial cycle of miniatures, the Chanson of St Alexis, and the commentary on spiritual warfare and crisis, presented Christina with a multifaceted devotional text that emphasized the virtues of spiritual manliness and taught her how to become a virago; female man of God. Specifically, the addition of the Chanson de St. Alexis provided the reader with a vivid example of the metamorphic power of navigating crisis in pursuit of spiritual masculinity and amelioration.

Paper b: Inspired by classical ideals, medieval humanists sought to reform medieval culture in response to a perceived social, intellectual, and philosophical ‘crisis’. The humanist men who shaped society recognised that if their vision was going to flourish, it was vital that women understood their roles and did not question them. Conduct manuals explaining the roles of women, based on people, relationships, and tales from antiquity, were part of the humanist response to the perceived ‘crisis’ of the Middle Ages. With a focus on late medieval Florence, this paper examines those manuals and how their contents were understood by women.

Paper c: Scholars have largely understood Margery Kempe’s outbursts as physical performances; however, her utterances can also be interpreted as sonic devices that work to disrupt the cultural contexts she belongs. In one exemplary scene, Kempe leaves a church when a man suddenly “toke hir be the sleve and seyd, ‘Damsel, why wepist thu so sor?,’” as if he had the right to demand linguistic meaning of her movements and sounds. In response, Kempe merely replies, “‘It is not yow to telle.’” After, Kempe turns her back and leaves with nothing but a veiled response that reveals that her cries do carry meaning but that the meaning belongs to her. Of course, her flippant reply awards some linguistic power to Kempe, but, I argue, she is only able to make such a remark because her initial sonic utterances are resistant to penetrability, which, as a result, repositions the power of translation out of the dominant hands of men and places it back into Kempe’s Book. Thus, Kempe reveals her own noisy defiance to male religious leaders in this moment as well as her own authorial resistance to her readers who are also left with nothing but the echo of her veiled retort.