Social Filth: An Interdisciplinary Roundtable on Medieval Obscenity (A Roundtable)
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Institute for Research in the Humanities, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
Organizer Name
Melissa Vise; Carissa M. Harris
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison; Temple Univ.
Presider Name
Melissa Vise
Paper Title 1
Indecent Animals in Late Medieval Valencia
Presenter 1 Name
Abigail Agresta
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Queen's Univ. Kingston
Paper Title 2
O Mentula: The Transgressive Power of a Latin Obscenity
Presenter 2 Name
Sean Tandy
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Indiana Univ.-Bloomington
Paper Title 3
Talking Dirty about the Gods: The Function of Obscenity in Norse Mythological Poems
Presenter 3 Name
Ali Frauman
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Indiana Univ.-Bloomington
Paper Title 4
Swearing in Church: Medieval Profanity and Québécois Sacres
Presenter 4 Name
Aylin Malcolm
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Paper Title 5
Marginal Members: Male Members in Text and Image in The Romance of the Rose
Presenter 5 Name
Judith Weston
Presenter 5 Affiliation
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Paper Title 6
Keeping It Clean: Medieval Obscenity in the Modern Classroom
Presenter 6 Name
Mary C. Flannery
Presenter 6 Affiliation
Independent Scholar
Start Date
12-5-2018 10:00 AM
Session Location
Bernhard 158
Description
Medieval obscenity was a category between literature and law, one that was dependent on aesthetics as it was on notions of transgression. Bald, naked sheela-na-gigs carved in Irish churches lewdly exhibited their vulvas to passing parishioners; comic texts like the Middle French farce La confession Margot used obscenity to critique clerical sexual misconduct and exploit the possibilities of confessional practice; fifteenth-century Scotswomen took one another to court for hurling insults like “pintill in pintill out huir” [penis in, penis out whore]; and fourteenth-century Italian gamblers used the phrase “by the cunt of the Virgin Mary” for good luck, sparking prosecution for gambling as well as blasphemy. At the same time, religious writers like Gregory the Great, Caesarius of Heisterbach, Robert Mannyng, and John Mirk shared a popular exemplum about a chaste nun who was condemned to eternal damnation for her bawdy talk, which infected the nunnery with transgression and caused her sisters to “thenke on synne,” and Michael Camille has noted how (likely) fifteenth-century readers of Aristotle’s De generatione erased miniatures depicting copulating figures, demonstrating both the cultural appeal and the taboo of obscenity. This session expands on recent scholarship on medieval obscenity, including Nicole Nolan Sidhu’s Indecent Exposure: Gender, Politics, and Obscene Comedy in Middle English Literature (2016) and Nicola McDonald’s edited collection, Medieval Obscenities (2007), as well as “Feminist Readings of Medieval Obscenity,” a paper panel from the 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies (2016) organized by Sidhu and sponsored by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship.
Melissa Vise, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Carissa Harris, Temple University
Social Filth: An Interdisciplinary Roundtable on Medieval Obscenity (A Roundtable)
Bernhard 158
Medieval obscenity was a category between literature and law, one that was dependent on aesthetics as it was on notions of transgression. Bald, naked sheela-na-gigs carved in Irish churches lewdly exhibited their vulvas to passing parishioners; comic texts like the Middle French farce La confession Margot used obscenity to critique clerical sexual misconduct and exploit the possibilities of confessional practice; fifteenth-century Scotswomen took one another to court for hurling insults like “pintill in pintill out huir” [penis in, penis out whore]; and fourteenth-century Italian gamblers used the phrase “by the cunt of the Virgin Mary” for good luck, sparking prosecution for gambling as well as blasphemy. At the same time, religious writers like Gregory the Great, Caesarius of Heisterbach, Robert Mannyng, and John Mirk shared a popular exemplum about a chaste nun who was condemned to eternal damnation for her bawdy talk, which infected the nunnery with transgression and caused her sisters to “thenke on synne,” and Michael Camille has noted how (likely) fifteenth-century readers of Aristotle’s De generatione erased miniatures depicting copulating figures, demonstrating both the cultural appeal and the taboo of obscenity. This session expands on recent scholarship on medieval obscenity, including Nicole Nolan Sidhu’s Indecent Exposure: Gender, Politics, and Obscene Comedy in Middle English Literature (2016) and Nicola McDonald’s edited collection, Medieval Obscenities (2007), as well as “Feminist Readings of Medieval Obscenity,” a paper panel from the 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies (2016) organized by Sidhu and sponsored by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship.
Melissa Vise, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Carissa Harris, Temple University