Matching Items (2)
Description
This dissertation focuses on the connections between childbirth and spirituality in fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England. It argues that scholastic interest in conception and procreation led to a proliferation of texts mentioning obstetrics and gynecology, and that this attention to women's medicine and birth spread from the universities to the laity. This dissertation contends that there is interdependence between spiritual and physical health in late medieval English religious culture, correlated with and perhaps caused by an increasing fascination with materialism and women's bodies in religious practices and rhetoric. The first chapter provides an analysis of birth in medical and pastoral texts. Pastoral works were heavily influenced by the ecclesiastical emphasis on baptism, as well as by scholastic medicine's simultaneous disdain for and reluctant integration of folk medicine. The second chapter examines birth descriptions in narratives of saints' miracles and collections of exempla; these representations of childbirth were used in religious rhetoric to teach, motivate, and dissuade audiences. The third chapter turns to the cycle play representations of the nativity as depicting the mysteries of human generation and divine incarnation for public consumption. The fourth chapter analyzes the abstract uses of childbirth in visionary and other religious texts, especially in descriptions of spiritual rebirth and the development of vice and virtue in individuals or institutions. By identifying their roles as analogous with the roles of midwives, visionaries authorized themselves as spiritual caretakers, vital for communal health and necessary for collective spiritual growth. These chapters outline a trajectory of increasing male access to the birthing chamber through textual descriptions and prescriptions about birth and midwifery. At the same time, religious texts acknowledged, sought to regulate, and sometimes even utilized the potential authority of mothers and midwives as physical and spiritual caretakers.
ContributorsSwann, Alaya (Author) / Voaden, Rosalynn (Thesis advisor) / Newhauser, Richard (Committee member) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This research examines twelfth-century Anglo-Norman literature as social commentary, in support of or as critique of the ruling class, and investigates what Anglo-Norman society considered the most profound responsibilities of kingship. Literature offered a space for courtly poets and chroniclers to critique authority and express concerns about issues in the court. Both R. Howard Bloch (2003) and Albrecht Classen (2008) have examined the political aspect of Marie de France’s lais, relying on the context in John of Salisbury’s political treatise Policraticus. While John’s written views are broadly reflective of his society’s beliefs, he primarily examines the king’s role in promoting religion and justice. This study’s inclusion of three other chronicles written contemporaneously—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain, and Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium—reveals more nuance and breadth in both the Anglo-Norman political realm and twelfth-century ideologies of kingship. By extending prior research, broadening the range of voices included in the conversation, and analyzing multiple chronicles in conjunction with the lais of Marie de France, this research explores what twelfth-century Anglo-Norman society considered the four most critical tenets of kingship: reverence for religious authority, the administration of equitable justice, generosity in sustaining one’s vassals and strangers alike, and respecting the bonds of feudal loyalty.
ContributorsMoss, Mallory (Author) / Maring, Heather (Thesis director) / Cruse, Markus (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Community Resources and Development (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor)
Created2023-12