Female Friendship in Medieval Literature II

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Medieval Studies Institute, Indiana Univ.-Bloomington

Organizer Name

Usha Vishnuvajjala

Organizer Affiliation

Indiana Univ.-Bloomington

Presider Name

Karma Lochrie

Presider Affiliation

Indiana Univ.-Bloomington

Paper Title 1

Models of Female Friendship in the Lives of Saints

Presenter 1 Name

Andrea Boffa

Presenter 1 Affiliation

York College, CUNY

Paper Title 2

Love and Friendship in the Twelfth Century

Presenter 2 Name

Stella Wang

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Harvard Univ.

Paper Title 3

Sisters, Eroticism, and the Red Cat: Homosocial Female Bonds in Troubadour Poetry

Presenter 3 Name

Leslie Anderson

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Tulane Univ.

Start Date

14-5-2017 10:30 AM

Session Location

Valley III Stinson Lounge

Description

Studies of friendship in medieval literature have, until recently, tended to focus on friendships between and among men, such as those among knights or those in political communities such as a king's affinity. But recent work on recovering literary depictions of women's experiences, such as the 2011 edited volume The Inner Life of Women in Medieval Romance Literature: Grief, Guilt, and Hypocrisy and the University of Surrey's project "Women's Literary Culture & The Medieval Canon" have begun to do the work of opening up space in which to investigate friendships between women. As work on early modern women's political friendships demonstrates, this subject is ripe for study. This panel will aim to query some aspects of medieval literary representations of friendships or alliances between women. Papers may consider religious, aesthetic, or political aspects of such friendship in any genre of medieval literature.

Shannon N. Gayk