Book ID: CBB001201715

From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (2013)

unapi

Burns, E. Jane (Editor)
McCracken, Peggy (Editor)


University of Notre Dame Press


Publication Date: 2013
Physical Details: ix + 270 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

The Middle Ages provides a particularly rich trove of hybrid creatures, semi-human beings, and composite bodies: we need only consider manuscript pages and stone capitals in Romanesque churches to picture the myriad figures incorporating both human and animal elements that allow movement between, and even confusion of, components of each realm. From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe raises the issues of species and gender in tandem, asking readers to consider more fully what happens to gender in medieval representations of nonhuman embodiment. The contributors reflect on the gender of stones and the soul, of worms and dragons, showing that medieval cultural artifacts, whether literary, historical, or visual, do not limit questions of gender to predictable forms of human or semi-human embodiment. By expanding what counts as the body in medieval cultural studies, the essays shift our understanding of gendered embodiment and articulate new perspectives on its range, functions, and effects on a broader theoretical spectrum. Drawing on depictions of differently bodied creatures in the Middle Ages, they dislodge and reconfigure long-standing views of the body as always human and the human body as merely male and female. The essays address a number of cultural contexts and academic disciplines: from French and English literature to objects of Germanic and Netherlandish material culture, from theological debates to literary concerns with the soul. They engage with issues of gender and embodiment located in stones, skeletons, and snake tails, swan-knights, and werewolves, along with a host of other unexpected places in a thought-provoking addition to somatic cultural history.

...More

Description Contents:


Reviewed By

Review Williams, Tara (2014) Review of "From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe". Renaissance Quarterly (p. 669). unapi

Includes Chapters

Chapter Cohen, Jeffrey J. (2013) The Sex Life of Stone. In: From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (p. 17). unapi

Chapter Guynn, Noah D. (2013) Hybridity, Ethics, and Gender in Two Old French Werewolf Tales. In: From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (p. 157). unapi

Chapter Rasussen, Ann Marie (2013) Moving beyond Sexuality in Medieval Sexual Badges. In: From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (p. 221). unapi

Chapter Robertson, Elizabeth (2013) Kissing the Worm: Sex and Gender in the Afterlife and the Poetic Posthuman in the Late Middle English “A Disputacion betwyx the Body and Wormes”. In: From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (p. 121). unapi

Chapter Burns, E. Jane; McCracken, Peggy (2013) Introduction: Gendered Bodies in Unexpected Places. In: From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (p. 1). unapi

Chapter McCracken, Peggy (2013) Nursing Animals and Cross-Species Intimacy. In: From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (p. 39). unapi

Chapter Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn (2013) The Lady and the Dragon in Chrétien's Chevalier au lion. In: From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (p. 65). unapi

Chapter Elliott, Dylan (2013) Rubber Soul: Theology, Hagiography, and the Spirit World of the High Middle Ages. In: From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (p. 89). unapi

Chapter Burns, E. Jane (2013) A Snake-Tailed Woman: Hybridity And Dynasty in the Roman de Mélusine. In: From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (p. 185). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001201715/

Similar Citations

Chapter Rasussen, Ann Marie; (2013)
Moving beyond Sexuality in Medieval Sexual Badges (/isis/citation/CBB001201723/)

Chapter Guynn, Noah D.; (2013)
Hybridity, Ethics, and Gender in Two Old French Werewolf Tales (/isis/citation/CBB001201721/)

Chapter Tellkamp, Jörg Alejandro; (2009)
Natur- und erkenntnisphilosophische Grundlagen der passiones animae bei Albert dem Großen (/isis/citation/CBB001200498/)

Chapter McCracken, Peggy; (2013)
Nursing Animals and Cross-Species Intimacy (/isis/citation/CBB001201718/)

Book Campbell, Gordon Lindsay; (2014)
The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life (/isis/citation/CBB001422644/)

Book Mark Hengerer; Nadir Weber; (2020)
Animals and Courts: Europe, c. 1200-1800 (/isis/citation/CBB344692492/)

Book Obermaier, Sabine; (2009)
Tiere und Fabelwesen im Mittelalter (/isis/citation/CBB001200352/)

Chapter Margócsy, Dániel; (2011)
The Camel's Head: Representing Unseen Animals in Sixteenth-Century Europe (/isis/citation/CBB001201614/)

Article Ridley, Glynis; (2010)
Introduction: Representing Animals (/isis/citation/CBB001032699/)

Book Simons, Patricia; (2011)
The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History (/isis/citation/CBB001251131/)

Book Kalof, Linda; (2010)
A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Medieval Age (/isis/citation/CBB001550947/)

Article Pandey, Rajyashree; (2005)
Desire and Disgust: Meditations on the Impure Body in Medieval Japanese Narratives (/isis/citation/CBB000660194/)

Book McCall, Timothy; Roberts, Sean E.; Fiorenza, Giancarlo; (2013)
Visual Cultures of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe (/isis/citation/CBB001201734/)

Book Benjamin Anderson; (2017)
Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art (/isis/citation/CBB542320377/)

Chapter Thomas, Deborah A.; (2010)
Assyrian Monsters and Domestic Chimeras (/isis/citation/CBB001201873/)

Book Knoepflmacher, U. C.; Browning, Logan Delano; (2010)
Victorian Hybridities: Cultural Anxiety and Formal Innovation (/isis/citation/CBB001201860/)

Book Antoine Traisnel; (2020)
Capture: American Pursuits and the Making of a New Animal Condition (/isis/citation/CBB660480379/)

Authors & Contributors
Barea, Joaquin Pascal
Antoine Traisnel
Mark Hengerer
Nadir Weber
Campbell, Gordon Lindsay
McCall, Timothy
Concepts
Animals
Science and art
Science and culture
Science and literature
Visual representation; visual communication
Human-animal relationships
Time Periods
Medieval
Early modern
19th century
Ancient
18th century
Renaissance
Places
Europe
United States
Greece
France
Byzantium
Japan
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment