published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This thesis examines the use and function of the human body as a surface that is inscribed with a number of socially significant meanings and how these inscriptions operate in the specific late medieval cultural production. Drawing on Jauss's notion of the social and political significance of medieval narrative, I seek to determine how specific texts contribute to a regulatory practice by thematizing bodies that are perceived as "other," that resist or defy an imagined social norm or stereotype. Each of the dissertation's four chapters treats a different set of notions about the human body. The first one examines Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale and The King of Tars as representations of ethnographic difference. I argue that the late Middle Ages did not have the notion of "race" as a signifier of ethnic difference: instead there is a highly unstable system of positions that place an individual in relation to Christian Salvation History. Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid is at the centre of chapter two that examines the moral issues surrounding leprosy as a stigmatized disease. Reading the text as a piece of medical historiography, I argue that one of the purposes of the narrative is to establish the link between Cresseid's sexual behaviour and her disease. A discussion of the homosocial underpinnings of late medieval feudal society, particularly in light of Duby's notion of "les jeunes," forms the basis of the final two chapters. Chapter three discusses Chaucer's Legend ofLucrece and the narrative function of rape as a pedagogical instrument with the aim to ensure the availability of untouched female bodies for a "traffic in women" between noblemen. Chapter four examines transgressive sexual acts as the objects of jokes in fabliaux, such as Chaucer's Miller's Tale. By using shame and ridicule as their main strategy, these texts, I argue, fulfil an exemplary function and act as a warning to young noblemen to maintain an erotic discipline as future heads of feudal houses and as an upcoming political elite.

This thesis examines the use and function of the human body as a surface that is inscribed with a number of socially significant meanings and how these inscriptions operate in the specific late medieval cultural production. Drawing on Jauss's notion of the social and political significance of medieval narrative, I seek to determine how specific texts contribute to a regulatory practice by thematizing bodies that are perceived as "other," that resist or defy an imagined social norm or stereotype. Each of the dissertation's four chapters treats a different set of notions about the human body. The first one examines Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale and The King of Tars as representations of ethnographic difference. I argue that the late Middle Ages did not have the notion of "race" as a signifier of ethnic difference: instead there is a highly unstable system of positions that place an individual in relation to Christian Salvation History. Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid is at the centre of chapter two that examines the moral issues surrounding leprosy as a stigmatized disease. Reading the text as a piece of medical historiography, I argue that one of the purposes of the narrative is to establish the link between Cresseid's sexual behaviour and her disease. A discussion of the homosocial underpinnings of late medieval feudal society, particularly in light of Duby's notion of "les jeunes," forms the basis of the final two chapters. Chapter three discusses Chaucer's Legend ofLucrece and the narrative function of rape as a pedagogical instrument with the aim to ensure the availability of untouched female bodies for a "traffic in women" between noblemen. Chapter four examines transgressive sexual acts as the objects of jokes in fabliaux, such as Chaucer's Miller's Tale. By using shame and ridicule as their main strategy, these texts, I argue, fulfil an exemplary function and act as a warning to young noblemen to maintain an erotic discipline as future heads of feudal houses and as an upcoming political elite. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Abstract not available

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that the "blason corporel" is a useful tool for understanding Paul-Marie Lapointe's poetry. Lapointe himself recognises that the variations of the "blason" that we can find in his poems are not the result of formal experimentation, but of a vision of the universe. The "poete quebecois" is seeking the unchanging: the human body and its place in the cosmos are two of the things that do not change, and thus, they are an important part of Lapointe's poetry. / In our introduction, we define the "blason corporel" as it emerged in France, during the Renaissance. We use the concept of the eternal return, as developed by Neitzsche, to try and understand how the same vision of the universe can perpetuate itself through the centuries. In our first chapter, we study the presence of the "blason" in Bouche rouge. In our second chapter, we examine the presence of the "blasons" in all of Lapointe's works. To do so, we use the rhetoric of figures, which enables us to evaluate the effect of the presence of the "blason" on the form. We come to the conclusion that the "blason" are structured by an accumulation of metaphors. This figure, the metaphor, abolishes all limits ("un decloisonnement") which brings us, in our conclusion, to concepts related to psychoanalysis and the study of myths.

This dissertation examines the representations of the body in the completed dramatic works of Heinrich von Kleist (1777--1811). While taking into account the psychoanalytical and philosophical approaches to Kleist, this project has Heiner Miller's words as its point of departure: that the theater represents the collision of ideas with the body. The forces of power, gender and authority leave their traces of this collision on the bodies of his characters, whose metaphorical and literal falls, wounds and recoveries speak their own gestural language. / This study is organized on the principle of Kleist's use of genre designation, the approximate chronological order of his plays, and the representation of the body. Chapter one focuses on Die Familie Schroffenstein, Der zerbrochne Krug, and Amphitryon and the notion of bodily authenticity and integrity; chapter two, on Die Hermannsschlacht and Penthesilea, looks at the spectacle of violence and its effect on the body mobilized by emotional extremity; the third chapter, on Kleist's most celebrated works, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg and Das Kathchen von Heilbronn, examines aspects of gender and vulnerability. The conclusion views his essay "Uber das Marionettentheater" not as a key to understanding his works, but rather as a culmination of them, and investigates Kleist's writing on the wounded body and its connection to grace.

No description available.

No description available.

At the beginnings of the Gothic, in the eighteenth century, there was an anxiety or taboo surrounding consumption and appetite for the Gothic text itself and for the excessive and sensational themes that the Gothic discussed. The female body, becoming a commodity in society, was objectified within the texts and consumed by the villain (both metaphorically and literally) who represented the perils of gluttony and indulgence and the horrors of cannibalistic desire. The female was the object of consumption and thus was denied appetite and was depicted as starved and starving. This also communicated the taboo of female appetite, a taboo that persists and changes within the Gothic as the female assumes the status of subject and the power to devour; she moves from being ethereal to bestial in the nineteenth century. With her renewed hunger, she becomes the consumer, devouring the villain who would eat her alive. The two sections of this study discuss the extremes of appetite and the extremes of bodily representations: starvation and cannibalism.

Not available / text