Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 232-251).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universite de Reims, 1998. / "Année 1998." Title from Summary page ; description based on resource as of 2005-06-17. Includes bibliographical references.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Robert L. Clark / Medieval French literature provides the modern researcher with references to the healing arts in many passages that are incorporated into prose or poetic works. Because there was no clear separation of the genres into modern classifications, references to treatment of sicknesses of body, mind or spirit are woven into many literary works, providing us with a kind of snapshot of the state of the art healing practices of the day. Texts make reference to herbs and plants used to cure the ailments of the body, gardens and flowers that refresh the spirit, miraculous unguents, cures through the intercession of the saints and the Virgin Mary and surgical procedures. Texts examined here include Le Roman de la Rose, Erec et Enide, Aucassin et Nicolette, Les Lais of Marie de France, Le conte du Graal, Le chevalier de la charrette, La Condamnation de Banquet, Yvain, Cligès, La Chanson de Roland and Treize Miracles de Notre-Dame. The picture they provide of the medicine of the time has a certain charm and quaintness that many moderns seek in holistic treatments of today which hearken back to this more rustic medicine.

This thesis interprets The Book of Margery Kempe using a medieval medical approach. Through an interdisciplinary methodology based on a medical humanities framework, the thesis explores the significance of Kempe’s painful experiences through a broad survey of the human life cycle, as understood in medieval culture. In exploring the interplay of humoral theory, medical texts, religious instruction and life cycle taxonomies, it illustrates the porousness of medicine and religion in the Middle Ages and the symbiotic relationship between spiritual and corporeal health. In an age when the circulation of medical texts in the English vernacular was increasing, scholastic medicine not only infiltrated religious houses but also translated into lay praxis. Ideas about the moral and physical nature of the human body were thus inextricably linked, based on the popular tradition of Christus medicus. For this reason, the thesis argues that Margery Kempe’s pain, experience and controversial performances amongst her euen-cristen were interpreted in physiological and medical terms by her onlookers, as ‘pain-interpreters’. It also offers a new transcription of the recipe from B.L. Add. MS 61823, f.124v, and argues for its importance as a way of reading the text as an ‘illness narrative’ which depicts Margery Kempe’s spiritual journey from sickness to health. The chapters examine Kempe’s humoral constitution and predisposition to mystical perceptivity, her crying, her childbearing and married years, her menopausal middle age of surrogate reproductivity, and her elderly life stage. Medical texts such as the Trotula, the Sekenesse of Wymmen and the Liber Diversis Medicinis help to shed light on the ways in which medieval women’s bodies were understood. The thesis concludes that, via a ‘pain surrogacy’ hermeneutic, Kempe is brought closer to a knowledge of pain which is transformational, just as she transforms through the stages of the life cycle.

Thesis--Freie Universität Berlin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-249) and index.

This thesis explores the spectrum of signification of disability, impairment and embodied difference in medieval drama. Drama is an important medium in which to explore what the body is used to signify as it provides an extra dimension in the physical embodiment and performance of these physical and spiritual conditions. Despite the value of medieval drama in understanding the significations of physical and psychological affliction, it remains a neglected area of scholarly research. In order to understand the meaning of dramatic representations of disability and impairment, it is necessary to explore the spectrum of signification attached to these conditions, since they could elicit such unstable and ambivalent responses. In this endeavour, this thesis consults medical, historical and cultural sources in addition to play-texts and performance evidence in order to understand the construction and representation of specific types of physical and psychological affliction in medieval drama, and what these conditions are used to signify through the body. Over the four chapters of this thesis I examine the ageing body (chapter 1); the unconverted Jewish body (chapter 2); the disease of leprosy (chapter 3); and wounds, mutilation and dismemberment (chapter 4). The play-texts I use deliberately draw upon a wide range of characters and personified abstractions, from the moral and the sacred to the immoral and the profane, from biblical drama to morality plays. These diverse conditions and identities allow an overarching insight into their use and meanings in medieval drama. Similarly, the diverse range of characters allows me to consider how the body is used to reflect the moral and spiritual condition of a character through the embodied mode of dramatic performance. For each of my chapters, the conditions I discuss possess ambivalence in their contrasting meanings, which binds the thesis together as a whole in acknowledging the changing and contrasting significations of disability, impairment and embodied difference according to the context.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:17:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Lidiane Alves de SOUZA Dissertacao.pdf: 891385 bytes, checksum: a5805e5f782235f79e0c3e3b0f7465c1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-08-24 / The proposition of this academic research is to investigate the representations of female body produced by medical discourse in the 13th century, starting from the analysis of three genres of medical literature in Late Middle Ages: the medical comments to Isagoge of Johannitius from Pedro Hispano, intellectual and physical portuguese, the theoretical treatise assigned to Alberto Magno called De secretis mulierum, and the set of recipes, Thesaurus pauperum, also authored by Peter of Spain. In this context, the medical knowledge rested basically in Aristotle's natural philosophy and in galenism (that had incorporated the medical knowledge and philosophy of the Ancient World), taken up and reinterpreted by the Arabs. For women and female issues, the medicine, under the reasoning of these bases, represented a resumption of a long medical tradition that had distinguished, hierarchized and inferiorized the female body in relation to the male body, likewise the woman's body was intended only for reproduction. Identified mainly regarding to the works of Aristotle and Galen, this understanding has been assimilated and resignified in the writings of the Latin medical tradition (Etimologias, of Isidore of Seville) and in the medieval arabic tradition (De Genecia, from Haly Abbas and Canon of Medicine, from Avicena). As medical scholastics major auctoritates, the images and representations in these differents traditions accounted the main references to think the women and their body in 13th century medicine. It's about these images and representations that we examine for analysis throughout this work. / O presente trabalho tem como proposta a investigação das representações corporais femininas produzidas pelo discurso médico no século XIII a partir da análise de três gêneros da literatura médica produzidos no baixo medievo: o comentário médico ao Isagoge de Johannitius do intelectual e físico português Pedro Hispano, o tratado teórico atribuído a Alberto Magno intitulado De secretis mulierum, e o receituário Thesaurus pauperum também de autoria petrinícia. Nesse contexto, o conhecimento médico assentava-se basicamente na filosofia natural de Aristóteles e no galenismo (que havia incorporado o conhecimento médico-filosófico do mundo antigo), absorvido e reinterpretado pelos árabes. Para as mulheres e os problemas femininos a fundamentação da medicina sob essas bases representou a retomada de uma longa tradição médica que havia diferenciado, inferiorizado e hierarquizado o corpo das mulheres em relação ao masculino, e o associado exclusivamente à reprodução. Identificada principalmente às obras de Aristóteles e Galeno, essa forma de compreensão fora assimilada e ressignificada nos escritos da tradição médica latina (Etimologias, de Isidoro de Sevilha) e árabe medieval (De genecia, de Haly Abbas, e Cânon de Medicina, de Avicena). Sendo as principais auctoritates da escolástica médica, as imagens e representações presentes nessas diferentes tradições representaram as principais referências para se pensar as mulheres e seu corpo na medicina do século XIII. É sobre essas imagens e representações que nos debruçamos para análise ao longo desse trabalho.

This thesis presents the first steps towards a critical edition of the ‘De podagra’ (‘On Gout’), a pre-Gariopontean treatise excerpted from the Latin translation of the Greek ‘Therapeutica’ by Alexander of Tralles. From information collated, from manuscripts and printed texts, from four textual traditions, the Greek ‘Therapeutica’, the Latin Alexander, the ‘De podagra’, and Gariopontus’ ‘Passionarius’, a provisional Latin text of the ‘De podagra’ has been produced which looks forward to the last of these traditions, Gariopontus’ ‘Passionarius’. A full English translation of the ‘De podagra’ is given. The footnotes to the provisional Latin text of the ‘De podagra’ serve to illustrate the textual tradition and highlight points of relevance for the content of the text itself. These footnotes also contain information of significance to the reconstruction of each of the other three traditions. An appendix of ‘materia medica’ and an ‘index uerborum’ are included.

My dissertation examines late medieval literature through the lens of medical history, especially humoral psychology. Although the humors are still of interest to the history of medicine, they are often overlooked in current literary criticism. My project examines how the humors influenced representations of bodies in medieval literary texts (St. Erkenwald, Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, Richard Coer de Lyon, and Marie de France's Yonec). In chapters exploring the connection between the humors and religious devotion, marriage, cannibalism, and shape-shifting, I show that humoral psychology was not just a medical theory known to medieval medical practitioners, but also a deeply influential cosmology for the literary representation of bodies and emotions. I approach this project from two angles, using a methodology that relies on textual analysis and cultural contextualization. My work also aligns itself with scholars who have explored early modern works through the lens of historical phenomenology (Smith, Paster, Floyd-Wilson, Rowe). The project moreover encourages and contributes to the dialogue between the humanities and sciences in general and literature and medicine more specifically, as it makes connections to medical theories post-Descartes (Damasio) and to current scholarship regarding non-Western medical practices (Horden; Hsu) that discuss debates about balancing emotions and locating those emotions within the physical body. My project thus provides an analytical approach for interpreting medieval literature via medical models while also showing what the medieval period can contribute to the ongoing work of assessing the role of emotions in the past and its continued resonance in current medical debates.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:17:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Catarina Stacciarini Seraphin.pdf: 678136 bytes, checksum: 3415a622cfd7072b6f770b4b7351cb07 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-01-11 / This research intends to analyze sexuality inserted in the medical discourse of the thirteenth century, by the analysis of two important medical works assigned to the Portuguese physician Peter of Spain (1210 1277): the recipe book Thesaurus pauperum, written probably in the second half of the thirteenth century when the physician composed the papal curia and the Questiones super Viaticum, a medical commentary on the Viaticum of Ibn al Jazzār, translated and adapted by Constantine the African composed possibly in the period in which he taught in the Medical School of the University of Siena (1245-1250). During this period, sexuality permeated different fields of knowledge, integrating not only the medical discourse, but also the religious one, a discourse that had greater visibility. Thus, there was a duality concerning sexuality and its practices, that were on one hand repressed and controlled by a normative religious literature, and on the other hand were valued as important components in maintaining the health by the medical literature. This medical works still presented a discussion concerning the diseases related to sexuality, in other words, those that affect in some way the sexual practices or that present them as treatment. By the analysis of this works is possible to notice that the medical discourse diverges to some extent from the religious one, presenting a wider debate in relation to the theme, reiterating the relation among health and sexuality. / Esta dissertação tem por objetivo analisar a sexualidade inserida no discurso médico do século XIII, por meio da análise de duas importantes obras médicas atribuídas ao físico português Pedro Hispano (1210 1277): o receituário Thesaurus pauperum, escrito provavelmente na segunda metade do século XIII quando o físico compunha a cúria pontifícia e o Questiones super Viaticum, um comentário da escolástica médica sobre o Viaticum de Ibn al Jazzār, traduzido e adaptado por Constantino, o Africano, composto possivelmente no período de mestre na Faculdade de Medicina, na Universidade de Siena (1245-1250). Neste período, a sexualidade permeava diferentes áreas de saber, integrando não somente o discurso médico, mas também o religioso, discurso este que possuía maior visibilidade. Assim, existia uma dualidade no que diz respeito à sexualidade e suas práticas, que eram, por um lado, reprimidas e condenadas por uma literatura normativa religiosa e, por outro lado, eram valorizadas como importantes componentes na manutenção da saúde corporal na literatura médica. Essas obras médicas apresentavam ainda uma discussão concernente às enfermidades relacionadas à sexualidade, ou seja, aquelas que afetam de alguma maneira as práticas sexuais ou que as apresentam como terapêutica. Pela análise dessas obras percebe-se que o discurso médico diverge em certa medida do religioso, apresentando um debate mais amplo em relação ao tema, reiterando as relações entre saúde e sexualidade.