Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

History Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Journal

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Hagiography

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in History

Demonic Pedagogy And The Teaching Saint: Voice, Body, And Place In Cynewulf's Juliana, Christina M. Heckman May 2019

Demonic Pedagogy And The Teaching Saint: Voice, Body, And Place In Cynewulf's Juliana, Christina M. Heckman

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In Cynewulf’s Old English poem Juliana, the saint frames her encounters with her adversaries as pedagogical confrontations, refusing the lessons they attempt to “teach” her and ultimately adopting the identity of a teacher herself. These confrontations depend on three key tropes in the poem: Juliana’s voice, as a material manifestation of language deployed by the saint; her body, both as living body and as relic; and place, especially the place of the saint’s martyrdom and/or burial. Viewed through theories of material feminism, these tropes reveal diverse forms of agency in the poem, as both human and non-human agents make …


Visionary "Staycations": Meeting God At Home In Medieval Women’S Vision Literature, Jessica Barr Jun 2017

Visionary "Staycations": Meeting God At Home In Medieval Women’S Vision Literature, Jessica Barr

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Medieval vision literature frequently features descriptions of supernatural travel: to Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory, or to locations that allow the visionary to receive knowledge to which she would not normally be privy. A less explored trope of this literature, however, is the travel-without-travel that occurs when the visionary’s physical location is overlaid with a transcendent mode of perception. This essay will analyze such moments of spatial transformation in late medieval visionary and hagiographic narratives. In the vitae of many medieval holy women, visions that transform the domestic sphere figure as evidence of their sanctity; in first-person visionary accounts, on the …