Gender, reading, and truth in the twelfth century : the woman in the mirror / Morgan Powell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Powell, Morgan, 1959- author.

Series:

Medieval media cultures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

German literature--History and criticism--Middle High German, 1050-1500.

German literature.

Literature, Medieval--Appreciation.

Literature, Medieval.

French literature--To 1500--History and criticism.

French literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 419 pages) : illustrations (some color).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Leeds, England : Arc Humanities Press, [2020]

Language Note:

English

Biography/History:

Powell Morgan : Dr. Morgan Powell is a scholar of the media history of the Middle Ages and Lecturer of English at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Summary:

The twelfth century witnessed the birth of modern Western European literary tradition: major narrative works appeared in both French and in German, founding a literary culture independent of the Latin tradition of the Church and Roman Antiquity. But what gave rise to the sudden interest in and legitimization of literature in these "vulgar tongues"? Until now, the answer has centred on the somewhat nebulous role of new female vernacular readers. Powell argues that a different appraisal of the same evidence offers a window onto something more momentous: not "women readers" but instead a reading act conceived of as female lies behind the polysemic identification of women as the audience of new media in the twelfth century. This woman is at the centre of a re-conception of Christian knowing, a veritable revolution in the mediation of knowledge and truth. By following this figure through detailed readings of key early works, Powell unveils a surprise, a new poetics of the body meant to embrace the capacities of new audiences and viewers of medieval literature and visual art.

Contents:

Mutations of the reading woman

Reading as Mary did

Constructing the woman's mirror

Seeking the reader/ viewer of the St. Albans Psalter

Quae est ista, quae ascendit? (Canticles 3:6) : rethinking the woman reader in Early Old French literature

Ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus mihi (Canticles 6:2) : Mary's reading and the Epiphany of Empathy

A new poetics for Âventiure : the exposition of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival

The heart, the wound, and the word

sacred and profane.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [385]-410) and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-64189-377-X

OCLC:

1198931016