Winner of the R. H. Gapper Book Prize, awarded by the Society of French Studies
Madness in Medieval French Literature
Identities Found and Lost
Sylvia Huot
Price: £63.00 (hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-925212-1
Publication date: 11 September 2003
232 pages, 216x138 mm
A sample of this book is available in PDF format
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| Reviews |
| - '...a highly distinctive contribution to the study of cultural concepts of madness. It is an excellent achievment...' - TLS
- '[Huot] allows readers of her book to read the medieval texts with new eyes and...in a new light' - Wendy Pfeffer, French Review, vol. 79.2
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| Description | | - Original research from one of the major voices in contemporary medieval studies
- Reveals the cultural significance of madness in the Middle Ages
- Applies modern psychoanalytic theory to medieval texts
- Draws on an impressive range of texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth century
| Madness is a frequent theme in medieval French literature. It afflicts the two greatest heroes of the Arthurian world, Lancelot and Tristan, as well as numerous other knights and unlucky lovers in courtly tradition. It also appears in devotional literature, whether in the form of the 'holy fool' who impersonates madness as a kind of penance or in the motif of lunatics cured through the
miraculous intervention of a saint. These texts manifest a wide range of attitudes towards madness, which may be associated with nobility and refinement of character, with chivalric or spiritual transcendence, with tragic illness and impairment, with comic ineptitude, or with sin and degradation. Tracing these various depictions allows for a study of how and why madness is used in different texts
and different genres.
This new book, from one of the leading critics in medieval studies, ties in with contemporary interest in the politics of identity, and literary constructions of identity. There are many studies of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and class in medieval literature and society, but far fewer of madness. Yet madness is the ultimate 'queerness' or 'otherness', the limit
of the human condition. Madness has been identified as an important topic in feminist criticism, but has been explored largely with regard to nineteenth- and twentieth-century studies. The cultural significance of madness in the Middle Ages is often misrepresented in contemporary discussions. Sylvia Huot redresses that imbalance. |
Readership: Scholars and postgraduate students of medieval French literature and the social and cultural history of madness.
| Contents |
Introduction
1.
Abject insanity, madness sublime
2.
The specular madman
3.
Madness and social exclusion
4.
Heterosexuality and its discontents
5.
The living dead
6.
Madness and the body
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
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| Authors, editors,
and contributors |
Sylvia Huot, Reader in Medieval French Literature, and Fellow, Pembroke College, Cambridge
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