Embodied Temporalities: Reproduction, Illness, and Chronobiopolitics in Medieval France (2023)
Kaitlin Sager (Author)
Morton, Jonathan (Advisor)
Tulane University
Morton, Jonathan
Physical Details: 261
Language: English
This doctoral thesis explores how the genealogical preoccupations of late medieval romance texts from the Arthurian canon shaped cultural and intellectual understandings of the impaired body in relation to time. The primary romance texts in my corpus, Le Roman de Merlin, La Queste del Saint Graal, and Le Roman de Mélusine, coincide with the vernacularization of medicine in Western Europe. I examine depictions of non-normate bodies in medieval medical texts alongside works of romance, such as Aldebrandin of Siena’s Livre de Phisike (The Book of Medicine), the Trotula, and the De Secretis Mulierum (On Women’s Secrets), texts which repeat and interpret many of the same ideas of Classical physicians such as Galen, Hippocrates, and Aristotle, thanks especially to translations by Arabic intermediaries. My first chapter looks specifically at bodies in pre-modern medical literature, and how women’s bodies are imbued with the chronobionormative imperative to reproduce. In my second chapter, I look at representations of lactation and menstruation in romance. My third chapter focuses on demonic intervention in reproduction and representations of neonates with congenital anomalies. Finally, the fourth chapter examines visual and textual tropes of leprosy in the medieval period and beyond. Applying methods of literary studies and history of medicine to my comparative analysis of traditions of medicine and romance has led me to conclude that both genres are doing similar work of identifying categories of impairment to establish regimes of bodily differences, albeit to different ends. While medicine is concerned with identifying and treating these differences to treat and/or cure them, romance relies on the marvels of othered bodies to fulfill genealogical destinies, eventually requiring their assimilation or exile.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Maurizio Meloni;
(2021)
The politics of environments before the environment: Biopolitics in the longue durée
(/isis/citation/CBB363502094/)
Book
Forth, Christopher E.;
Crozier, Ivan;
(2005)
Body Parts: Critical Explorations in Corporeality
(/isis/citation/CBB000820036/)
Chapter
Sheridan, Bridgette;
(2010)
Whither Childbearing: Gender, Status and the Professionalization of Medicine in Early Modern France
(/isis/citation/CBB001220303/)
Chapter
Read, Kirk D.;
(2010)
Touching and Telling: Gendered Variations on a Gynecological Theme
(/isis/citation/CBB001220304/)
Book
Read, Kirk D.;
(2011)
Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction
(/isis/citation/CBB001024742/)
Book
Sara Ritchey;
Sharon Strocchia;
(2020)
Gender, Health, and Healing, 1250-1550
(/isis/citation/CBB430693710/)
Book
Park, Katharine;
(2009)
Secrets de femmes
(/isis/citation/CBB001035159/)
Article
Green, Monica H.;
(2005)
Bodies, Gender, Health, Disease: Recent Work on Medieval Women's Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB001021616/)
Article
Belle S. Tuten;
(2021)
Correcting the unnatural breast: gynecomastia and gender in medieval medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB904428889/)
Book
Park, Katharine;
(2006)
Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection
(/isis/citation/CBB000773343/)
Book
Leung, Angela Ki Che;
(2006)
Medicine for Women in Imperial China
(/isis/citation/CBB001023421/)
Thesis
Miller, Sarah Alison;
(2008)
Virgins, Mothers, Monsters: Late-Medieval Readings of the Female Body Out of Bounds
(/isis/citation/CBB001560899/)
Article
Trotignon, Olivier;
(2006)
Hôtels-Dieu, léproseries et saints guérisseurs dans le Berry médiéval
(/isis/citation/CBB000931810/)
Chapter
Gaia Gubini;
(2021)
Leprosy, Melancholy, Folly and their Representations in French Medieval Literature
(/isis/citation/CBB353904706/)
Book
Touati, François-Olivier;
(1998)
Maladie et société au Moyen Âge: La lèpre, les lépreux et les léproseries dans la province ecclésiastique de Sens jusqu'au milieu du XIVe siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB000076501/)
Chapter
Elma Brenner;
(2015)
Between Palliative Care and Curing the Soul: Medical and Religious Responses to Leprosy in France and England, c. 1100-c. 1500
(/isis/citation/CBB457827221/)
Book
Elma Brenner;
(2015)
Leprosy and Charity in Medieval Rouen
(/isis/citation/CBB928972978/)
Book
Touati, François-Olivier;
(1996)
Archives de la lèpre: Atlas des léproseries entre Loire et Marne au Moyen Age
(/isis/citation/CBB000076985/)
Article
Touati, François-Olivier;
(1980)
Une approche de la maladie et du phénomène hospitalier aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles: La léproserie du Grand-Beaulieu à Chartres
(/isis/citation/CBB000012669/)
Book
Mie Nakachi;
(2021)
Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union
(/isis/citation/CBB043150827/)
Be the first to comment!