In Praise of Folie: The Uses of Madness in Medieval French Literature
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Lucas Wood
Organizer Affiliation
Pennsylvania State Univ.
Presider Name
Kevin Brownlee
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Paper Title 1
Lancelot, Yvain, Merlin: Language Lost, Language Regained
Presenter 1 Name
Charlotte Ritzmann
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Paper Title 2
The Blame Game: The Use of Fos/Folie in Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la rose
Presenter 2 Name
Ellen Lorraine Friedrich
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Valdosta State Univ.
Paper Title 3
The Madness of Intergeneric Desire, or, The Secret Passages of the Prise d'Orange
Presenter 3 Name
Lucas Wood
Start Date
11-5-2013 3:30 PM
Session Location
Valley I Shilling Lounge
Description
This panel examines the function of madness—or madnesses, for they are strikingly heterogeneous—as a narrative device, or, better, as a mechanism for creating and managing avenues of narrative and discursive possibility in Old French romance (Arthurian and allegorical) and epic. It is especially concerned with the connection between insanity as gender trouble and insanity as genre trouble. Guiding questions include: does the “liminal” state marked by madness permit, while also concealing and legitimating, textual forays into the ambiguous borderlands where generic conventions and possibilities mingle and interact with generative results? Does the madman’s or madwoman’s discursive and embodied performance enable passages, either permanent or temporary, between overdetermined systems of representation and ethical evaluation, that is, between various ways of reading and being read? How do characters, readers, and texts register and respond to such mad play?
Lucas G. Wood
In Praise of Folie: The Uses of Madness in Medieval French Literature
Valley I Shilling Lounge
This panel examines the function of madness—or madnesses, for they are strikingly heterogeneous—as a narrative device, or, better, as a mechanism for creating and managing avenues of narrative and discursive possibility in Old French romance (Arthurian and allegorical) and epic. It is especially concerned with the connection between insanity as gender trouble and insanity as genre trouble. Guiding questions include: does the “liminal” state marked by madness permit, while also concealing and legitimating, textual forays into the ambiguous borderlands where generic conventions and possibilities mingle and interact with generative results? Does the madman’s or madwoman’s discursive and embodied performance enable passages, either permanent or temporary, between overdetermined systems of representation and ethical evaluation, that is, between various ways of reading and being read? How do characters, readers, and texts register and respond to such mad play?
Lucas G. Wood