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Orlemanski explores the texts of her vernacular writers to show how they deployed the rich terminology of embodiment and its ailments to portray symptomatic figures who struggled to control both their bodies and the interpretations that gave their bodies meaning. As medical paradigms mingled with penitential, miraculous, and socially symbolic systems, these texts demanded that a growing number of readers negotiate the conflicting claims of material causation, intentional action, and divine power. Examining both the medical writings of late medieval England and the narrative and poetic works that responded to them, Symptomatic Subjects illuminates the period's conflicts over who had the authority to construe bodily signs and what embodiment could be made to mean.
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Symptomatic Subjects
Alembics: Penn Studies in Liter ature and Science Mary Thomas Crane and Henry S. Turner, Series Editors
Symptomatic Subjects Bodies, Medicine, and Causation in the Literature of Late Medieval England
Julie Orlemanski
u n i v e r s i t y of pe n ns y lva n i a pr e s s p h i l a de l p h i a
Copyright © 2019 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Orlemanski, Julie, author. Title: Symptomatic subjects : bodies, medicine, and causation in the literature of late medieval England / Julie Orlemanski. Other titles: Alembics. Description: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2019] | Series: Alembics : Penn studies in literature and science | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018045209| ISBN 9780812250909 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 0812250907 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Literature and medicine—England—History—To 1500. | Diseases—England—Causes and theories of causation—History—To 1500. | English literature—Middle English, 1100–1500—History and criticism. | Human body in literature. | Causation in literature. Classification: LCC R702 .O75 2019 | DDC 610.942—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045209
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Contents
List of Abbreviations Introduction
ix 1
Part I. Thinking with Phisik Chapter 1. Imagining Etiology Chapter 2. Cause, Authority, Sign, and Book
9 41
Part II. Playing with Phisik Chapter 3. Satire and Medical Materialism
81
Chapter 4. Embodying Causation in Exempla
113
Part III. Emplotting Phisik Chapter 5. The Metaphysics of Phisik in the “Knight’s Tale”
147
Chapter 6. Desire and Defacement in the Testament of Cresseid 182
viii Contents
Part IV. Personalizing Phisik Chapter 7. Symptoms and the Signifying Condition in Hoccleve’s Series 217 Chapter 8. From Noise to Narration in the Book of Margery Kempe 249
Coda 278 Notes 281 Works Cited
307
Index 325 Acknowledgments 331
Abbreviations
DMLBS
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. 3 vols. Ed. Richard Ashdowne, David Howlett, and Ronald Latham. Oxford: British Academy, 2018. Online edition: http://www.brepolis.net. DOST A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Online edition, 2004: http://www.dsl.ac.uk/. Du Cange Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis. 10 vols. Ed. Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange. Niort : L. Favre, 1883–1887. On