Medieval saints' lives: the gift, kinship and community in old French hagiography
Contending that the study of hagiography is significant both for a consideration of medieval literature and for current theoretical debates in medieval studies, this book considers a range of Old French and Anglo-Norman texts, using modern theories of kinship and community to show how saints' l...
| Summary: | Contending that the study of hagiography is significant both for a consideration of medieval literature and for current theoretical debates in medieval studies, this book considers a range of Old French and Anglo-Norman texts, using modern theories of kinship and community to show how saints' lives construe social and sexual relations. Focusing on the depiction of the gift, kinship and community, the book maintains that social and sexual systems play a key role in vernacular hagiography. Such systems, along with the desires they produce and control, are, it is argued, central to hagiography's religious functions, particularly its role as a vehicle of community formation. In attempting to think beyond the limits of human relationships, saints' lives nonetheless create an environment in which queer desires and modes of connection become possible, suggesting that, in this case at least, the orthodox nurtures the queer. This book thus suggests not only that medieval hagiography is worthy of greater attention but also that this corpus might provide an important resource for theorizing community in its medieval contexts and for thinking it in the present.EMMA CAMPBELL is Associate Professor of French at the University of Warwick. The gift, sacrifice and social economy -- The gender of the gift -- Incest and life at the limits of the social -- Marriage and queer desire -- Textual community -- Queer community -- The Campsey Manuscript (London, BL, additional 70513) -- Oxford, Bodleian, canonici miscellaneous |
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| Item Description: | Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Oct 2015) |
| ISBN: | 1846156602 |