This seminar explores issues of medieval embodiment. On the one hand, we will be looking at the role of the lived body as it is depicted in literature – the body that eats and sleeps, loves and desires, suffers and dies; on the other hand, we will be examining the significance of divine physicality that becomes manifest in Christ’s incarnated and resurrected body. Not only will we pay close attention to the imbrications between sacred and secular notions of the body, but we will also challenge the idea of the Middle Ages as ‘dualistic’, by questioning predominant dichotomies between body and soul, immanence and transcendence, masculinity and femininity. By drawing on written representations of the body by authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Margery Kempe, John Gower, and William Langland, as well as on some of the seminal studies on medieval embodiment we will be exploring the medieval body as a site of multiple and competing discourses.
All texts and excerpts will be made available on Moodle at the beginning of the semester.
NOTE: Students taking this course and intending to do a MAP 4 in English Literatures should have already completed the lecture series course entitled "Survey of English Literatures" (BA English Module 4: English Literature).