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2006 Colloquium Paper Abstracts

Hostages, Captives, and Captivity: Expanding the Parameters of Women and Warfare in the Middle Ages
Colleen Slater | Department of History

While women and their relationship with warfare in the Middle Ages has been the focus of much discussion in the last decade, the attention has centered on female combatants, leaving other roles relatively unexplored.  With this in mind, this paper investigates two such unexplored topics:  captives and hostages.  As this paper demonstrates, women’s experiences and roles as hostages and captives were often specifically shaped by their sex.  This paper explores several of the ways in which this might happen, focusing on how a man’s status and manliness was tied up in his ability to protect his womenfolk, and likewise so much about a nation’s well-being was symbolically represented in the relative safety of its women. Thus, mistreating women was a particularly powerful symbolic act of defilement and violation that went beyond the woman herself.  Likewise, this paper will demonstrate how women could be the cause of war, how the harming of a female relative could have been seen as so humiliating or so politically provocative or as so particularly emotive, that the man felt he must respond with equal or greater violence, even if an act of violence against a woman might not have actually taken place.  By studying women as specific categories for analyzing captivity and hostage-taking, we can produce a more nuanced approach to the study of hostageship and captivity and enhance our understanding of women’s relationship to warfare both in terms of its effects on women and society as a whole, but also in addressing the ways that women are woven into the fabric of what war meant to the people participating in it.

History, Intertextuality, and Subjectivity in the Guzmán de Alfarache (1599)
Anthony M. Puglisi | Romance Studies

The Moorish novel, Ozmín y Daraja, which Mateo Alemán inserts into his picaresque novel, Guzmán de Alfarache (1599), uses the 1489 Castilian conquest of the town of Baza as its historical background.  Alemán reacts especially to López de Carvajal’s La conquista de Baza in the construction of this tale, responding to López de Carvajal’s theme of Christian self-righteousness in its project of taking over territories that Muslims controlled on the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere.  This reaction is linked with Guzmán’s (the main narrator and protagonist) reflections on his own past.  He will digress into stories of his experiences with the problems of race and class. These autobiographical musings will resonate with tales he hears on his adventures that deal with the theme of miscegenation and social class.  Ozmín, the hero and alter ego of Guzmán in the tale of Ozmín and Daraja, himself imitates real Christians from all walks of life with success, in turn also resonating with Guzmán’s past.  It is only after deeper investigation that the other characters of the Ozmín y Daraja tale discover that Ozmín is not who he claims to be, but rather a “Moor” from Granada.  Thus, Alemán speaks to the larger imperial projects of Spain with his response to historical reflections on the conquest of Baza, telling tales of lives on the margins of a society obsessed with blood purity and wealth, exposing the problems of a social world that uses predefined corporal signs as a manner of judging another person’s subjectivity.

"Salvation lies in our archbishop's crook": Archbishop Turpin and Perceptions of the Warrior-Cleric in Crusading Romances
Kristina Helmreich | College of Arts & Sciences

With the intrusion of crusading rhetoric into medieval Western literature came a paradoxical alliance-conflict between Church and State over the issue of crusading itself. At the center of the controversy was the question of who was to have the ultimate control over the waging of holy war; this clash carries over into crusading romances in a big way, as the Charlemagne romance Sege of Melayne shows strikingly. This Middle English text offers a strict—and decidedly eccentric—interpretation of the role the Church should play in crusading through its depiction of the warrior archbishop Turpin, a character it borrows from the much earlier Chanson de Roland. This paper traces the characterization of Turpin through multiple romances in which he appears, showing how the archbishop’s level of bellicosity and his relationship to his lord Charlemagne in each separate romance serve as a reliable barometer of whether the author was more inclined towards giving control of crusading over to the Church or to the State. Illustrating these textual differences not only brings into sharper focus the primacy of either Church or State in the eyes of each author, but also gives us a literary perspective on a social anomaly adopted and sanctioned by Crusade-era society: the warrior-cleric.

Alfred the King, Alfred the Translator, and Alfred the Writer: Identifying and Editing the Alfredian Canon
Caitlin Callaghan | Medieval Studies

Ever since William of Malmesbury journeyed around England in pursuit of works commissioned or composed by King Alfred, editors of Old English writing have attempted to create an Alfredian canon.  Yet despite the many years between Alfred's time and our own, that challenge remains little changed since the Middle Ages. Arguments regarding vocabulary, layout, and thematic similarities diversify this textual landscape.  Each of these arguments illuminates a central question facing most editors of Alfredian texts: did Alfred actually author the works that we attribute to him? The volume of manuscripts Alfred would have demanded suggests many scribes at work in the kingdom, whose various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds would have resulted in some unique manuscripts. Partly as a result of this authorial complication, the editorial history of Alfredian texts has not only influenced the way in which different editors have chosen to present these texts—i.e. of which text should critical editions even be made?—but also our understanding of Alfred himself. The tension between singular and common authorship provides a good backdrop for examining the editions of two of these Alfredian works: the first fifty Old English prose psalms of the Paris Psalter, and the Augustinian Soliloquies.  Until the question of authorship can reach some form of universal resolution, no ideal edition of any Alfredian text can exist.

"Le Regret de Maximian" and the Misgivings of Middle English
Leigh Harrison | Medieval Studies

"Le Regret de Maximian," a lament in twenty-three stanzas dating from the thirteenth century, has not been studied much: its sixth-century Latin source has been identified long ago, while its content mirrors that of a number of early Middle English poems concerned with death and the trials of old age. Inspecting the work again, however, productively calls into question a number of our assumptions about such literature. The "Regret"'s familiarity with Old English idiom, French verse form, and secular Latin poetry (for instance) draws our attention forcefully to the multilingualism of thirteenth-century British literary culture. In that context, importantly, even single-language texts may not reflect a single literary tradition.  Its manuscript placement gives us valuable insight into how the poem might have been interpreted by early readers, too: not so much as the wholly secular work it appears, as one whose Christianity those readers might have both alleged and defended. Ironically, it might be its differences from traditional Germanic elegy that make the "Regret de Maximian" especially congruent with Anglo-Saxon elegiac tradition.

"Preche it in þin harpe": Langland and the Idea of the Lyric
Curtis Jirsa | Medieval Studies

This paper examines the incorporation of lyric elements in Piers Plowman and considers how its systematic use of lyrical tropes can be reconciled with the poem's voiced concerns about the proper place of writing (especially short and lyric forms) in the social and religious spheres. In other words, how does the text's dependence on lyrical forms contribute to its forma tractandi: its method of proceeding and the meaning that its public would have been expected to draw from it? In order to understand the nature of Piers Plowman's innovations with lyric form, the poem will be compared to medieval French lyrico-narrative dream visions, such as the Roman de la Rose, which, like Piers Plowman, feature a narrator-reader who vacillates between omniscient and experiential perspectives (i.e. between narrative and lyric discourse). It is in Langland's deviations from the French lyrico-narrative template that we can discover not only his fundamental concerns about verse “makynge” but also the ways in which the secular lyric can be recuperated in the context of a framing narrative.

"Fear God and Give Glory to Him": A Fifteenth-Century Valencian Panel Painting of St. Vincent Ferrer
Taryn Chubb | History of Art

A mid-fifteenth century Valencian panel painting of St. Vincent Ferrer, recently acquired by the Meadows Museum of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, represents one of the earliest depictions of the then-recently canonized saint in his native Spain.  The painting has seldom been published and is now on exhibition for the first time since the 1940s.  Newly attributed to the well-known Valencian artist Jaume Baço, or Jacomart, and, therefore, firmly dated to the period immediately following St. Vincent’s canonization in 1455 and Jacomart’s death in 1461, the Meadows panel offers valuable insight into the process of the saint’s canonization, the development of his cult, and the standardization of his iconography.  Here, for the first time, this panel painting is considered in light of what is known about St. Vincent’s life and works, particularly his preaching campaigns in France, Italy, and Spain, in order to gain an understanding of the sources that served as the foundation for the images of the saint that were produced after his death.  Furthermore, this paper will examine the development of St. Vincent’s cult, including when and where images of St. Vincent were produced and for what purpose.

A Virginal Model: A Foray into the Devotional Practices of Poor Clares in Iberia
Emily Kelley | History of Art

This paper examines the relationship formed by the devotee and sacred figures in a set of fourteenth century images from the chapel of St. Michael at Pedralbes, a convent of Poor Clares in Barcelona. These works were commissioned for the private chapel of the abbess and were completed in 1346 by Ferrer Bassa.  The scholarship that has addressed these paintings to date has been focused either on attributing the artist’s hand or exploring possible connections to Giotto’s Arena Chapel. Rather than continue in this traditional mode of scholarship, my research has focused on the use of these images as devotional tools meant for the abbess’s private meditations. Commission records indicate that these images are depictions of the Seven Joys and Seven Sorrows of the Virgin and therefore are based on Mary’s experience of the events in Christ’s life. They demonstrate a marked difference from more typical Passion-centered visual meditative tools, which favor images of Christ’s pain and suffering. At Pedralbes, in contrast, Christ’s suffering is minimized and the focus is placed on the role of the Virgin in each scene. This group of images therefore emphasizes a direct association between the Virgin and the devotee which allows for a more intimate relationship between the two. Particularly significant to my argument is the Virgin’s physical appearance in each scene, which serves as a tool by which the female viewer would have been able to associate herself more intimately with the scene and thereby deepen her spiritual contemplation.

Portraying Laywomen's Imitation of the Virgin Martyrs in Osbern Bokenham's Legendys of Hooly Wummen
Cynthia Turner Camp | Medieval Studies

Can the late medieval married laywoman truly imitate the virgin martyrs with their preaching and self-willed deaths, or are these outspoken virgins venerated only for their intercessory abilities?  Osbern Bokenham reverses expectations on the imitability of the virgins in his mid-fifteenth-century Legendys of Hooly Wummen.  Six of his thirteen verse Lives were written for named women of the East Anglian mercantile and noble classes, and in his dedications, portrayal of his dedicatees' devotion to the saints, and portrayal of those saints, Bokenham fashions a picture of his patrons' piety which is predicated on their mimicking -- or not mimicking -- particular features of the Lives of those saints, even the virgins.  The thematic linking of dedicatee and saint in this fashion serves not only to highlight the imitative moments in the legend, but also to create the pious persona of the dedicatee in the image of this particular aspect of the saint.   These created personae act as  carefully constructed public statements of piety that were designed both to ensure continued prayers for the patrons' souls and to improve their spiritual standing in the community during their lives.

The Ethics of Corporal Punishment: Punishing Bodies and Saving Souls in Anglo-Saxon England
Nicole Marafioti | Medieval Studies

Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham, in his homily on Ahitophel and Absalom (c.998), briefly explains why criminals should be executed:  anyone who commits an offense grave enough to warrant death has been thoroughly seduced by the devil; his soul is almost certainly lost, so leaving him alive would only give him the opportunity to perform further misdeeds.  Archbishop Wulfstan of York, who drafted several sets of royal laws in the early eleventh century, takes a more lenient approach to corporal penalties.  Instead of prescribing death for most secular offenders, as earlier legal codes had done, Wulfstan’s laws advocate milder punishments, like mutilation, which would give convicted criminals time to repent of their sins before death.  Under Wulfstan’s laws, earthly justice would be satisfied by the physical punishment of a convicted criminal, the enduring visibility of a mutilated body would discourage others from replicating the criminal’s transgression, and the pain and shame of mutilation would encourage the condemned to seek God’s mercy with true contrition.  Whereas Ælfric asserts that a criminal’s body and soul should be condemned together, since most serious offenders would be instantly damned, Wulfstan maintains that secular crimes, like most other sins, do not automatically condemn the soul but should be redeemed through physical penance.  In this paper, I will explore the rationalizations provided by these two churchmen for the judicial destruction of Christian bodies, with the ethics of capital punishment providing insight into late Anglo-Saxon conceptions of the relationship between body and soul.

Grist for the Mill: Milling and Dispute in Medieval Dublin
Alissa McFarlin | Medieval Studies

Milling was an important aspect of daily life in the Middle Ages. Though widespread, it was nevertheless shaped by local context, and examination of a localized milling industry can provide a window on the character of the surrounding environment. Medieval Dublin, a chartered town in its own right, was also home to various ecclesiastical liberties as well as the administrative headquarters of the English colony in Ireland. Urban and with divided jurisdiction, Dublin thus provided a particular backdrop for the development of milling operations. Simply put, it was a situation ripe for dispute. Indeed, Dublin’s records chronicle a number of quarrels related to milling, many of which highlight the intrinsic tensions among the royal, municipal and ecclesiastical interests of the town. The wealthy entities which owned mills in Dublin clashed in order to ensure the smooth operation and profitability of their investments. Moreover, entities not rich enough to own mills sought to stake a claim to a share of the proceeds. As will be demonstrated, such disputes expose the patchwork landscape of medieval Dublin and its influence on milling in the area.

A Poetic Tally: Chaucer's Revision of Dante's Contrapasso in The House of Fame
Tricia Har Mandel | Comparative Literature

This paper seeks to address the relationship to Dante that Chaucer imagines for himself in his poetry by investigating a notion which seems to have become impacted in Chaucer’s poetic memory.  Despite its general application in Dante’s Hell and its haunting of the hopeful penitents in Purgatory, the “contrapasso” is only named as such once in the cantiche.  Often construed as Dante’s version of “an eye for an eye,” this principle fizzles as a law of pure commensurability, since Dante seems to believe that punishment is doled out according to some inscrutable, yet highly inventive measure.  This process Dante represents in his verse by confecting a complex of punishments which stand in some analogous relationship to their sins, but certainly not in direct opposition nor in a position of simple reciprocity.  By contrast, Chaucer’s House of Fame stages various examples of incommensurability, most notably in the figure and manner of Fame, but also in representations of Dido and the speech avatars that populate the houses of Fame and Rumor.  Consequently, Chaucer’s poem itself becomes an instance of counterpoint, exposing the dark underbelly of retributive justice and the impossibility of a class of judgment which intends to make visible the invisible.

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