The Signifying Body:

Dismemberment, Body Parts, and Embodiment
 

 Thematic Units

Past Meetings:

  • September 23rd, What is “body”?, Reading from Paul Schilder, The Image and

Appearance of the Human Body. 

 

  • October 20th, “When is a member a body’s part?”  Selections from The Body in

Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, edited by Hillman and

Mazzio and selections from Thinking the  Limits of the Body edited by Jeffrey

Cohen and Gail Weiss.

 

  • November 18th, “Body as Text,” Selections from Sarah Spence,  Texts and the Self in the

Twelfth Century and from Gary Cestaro, Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body.

 

  • December 10th, “Body, Social Space and Meaning,” Selections from Dawn Marie Hayes,

Body and Sacred Place in Medieval Europe

 

  • February 24th, O! Abelard! Abelard’s Historia calamitatum, Irvine, Martin, “Abelard

and (Re)Writing the Male Body: Castration, Identity and Remasculization” and Sarah Spence “Text of the Body.”

 

  • March 31st, “Making the Body Signify,” Work in Progress by Professor Renee Trilling,

“Heavenly Bodies: the Corporeality of Ælfric’s Female Saints.”

 

  • May 12th “Meaning, Metaphor, Body”

Le Goff, Jacques.  “Head or Heart? The Political Use of Body Metaphors in the Middle Ages.”  Trans. Patricia Ranum.  IN Ed. Michel Feher. New York: Zone, 1989, 12-26. And selections from Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson.  Metaphors We Live By.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.

  • September 29th “The Heart”

          Hamburger Jeffrey F. “The House of the Heart” Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a

           Medieval    Convent.

           MacKendrick, Karmen. The Word Made Skin. New York: Fordham UP, 2004.  [Especially,

           Introduction,   Word Made Flesh, Sacred Hearts, Figures of Desire]

  •  October 14th "Body and the Arts: A Meeting with Cynthia Hahn"

           Hahn, Cynthia.  Portrayed on the Heart.

  • April 11th "The Body Parts of Peggy McCracken"

          A meeting with Peggy McCracken, author of various texts which focus on the bodily.  She        

          offers  us a work- in- progress entitled, "Images of the Virgin:  Miracles, Bodies, and Love" to     

          discuss.

  • May 12th "The Gendered Body and Spirituality"

          Petroff, Elizabeth Alvilda.  “Writing the Body: Male and Female in the Writings of Marguerite   

          d’Oingt, Angela of Foligno, and Umiltà of Faenza” Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women  

           and  Mysticism.  204-224

           Stockton, Kathryn Bond.  “Bodies and God: Post Structuralist Feminists Return to the Fold of   

            Spiritual Materialsm.”  God Between their Lips. [sections: Irigaray’s Matrix: Post-structuralists 

            and Victorians, Hope in Failure: Feminists’ Felix Culpa, Real-Bodies Mysticism, Mystic

            unfathomable visibilities, Irigaray’s God between Their Lips: In search of symbolic Holes women

            can feel]

            Heinamaa, Sara.  “The Living Body” or “Sexual Erotic Bodies” or “Questions about Women”  

            Towards a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference.  

 

OTHER POSSIBILITIES:

The Heart II

Jager, Eric.  “Picturing the Metaphor” and “The Scriptorium of the Heart.” The Book of the Heart.

The Coeur Mangé. The vida of troubadour Guillem de Cabestaing. And Selected lyrical poetry featuring the heart.

The Late Courtly Body:

Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey.  Troping the Body: Gender, Etiquette, and Performance.  Carbondale,

IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2000. [esp. intro & “The Knight’s Body and the female Auctoritas: Christine de Pizan’s Conduct Texts”] 1-31.

Lerer, Seth.  “The Courtly Body and Late Medieval Literary Culture.”  The Book and the Body.  Ed. Dolores Warwick Frese and Katherine O’Brien O’Keefe.  Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1997.

Affect I: The Senses of the Body and Poetry:

Altieri, Charles.  “Engaging Affect in Painting and in Poetry.”  IN The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetics of the Affects.

Stewart, Susan.  “The Lyric Eidos” and/or “Touch in Aesthetic Forms.” IN Poetry and the Fate of the Senses.  

Affect II: From the Senses of the Body to Meaning:

Ben-Ze’ev.  “Rationality and Functionality.” IN The Subtlety of Emotions.

Kristeva, Julia.  “Ego Affectus Est. Bernard of Clairvaux: Affect, Desire, Love.” IN Tales of Love.

The Role of the Body in Reason and Understanding:

Johnson, Mark.  The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice.  “The Human Order” and/or “The Relations of the Soul and the Body and the Problem of Perceptual Consciousness.” The Structure of Behavior. 

 Todes, Samuel.  “The Subject Body in Perception and Conception: A Brief Sketch.”  Body and World.