Escrita e Gênero na Pensadora Medieval Cristina de Pisano

Não obstante já encontrarmos algumas mulheres que se destacaram como escritoras na Idade Média, algumas delas, inclusive, que trataram de temas relacionados a questão de gênero, como é o caso, por exemplo, de Hidelgard de Bingen (1098-1165), sendo por isso apontadas por alguns comentadores como precursoras do “feminismo”, mas é Cristina de Pisano (1365-143?), provavelmente, a primeira escritora “feminista” no sentido moderno da palavra. Participou ativamente do famoso movimento crítico-literário no medievo que ficou conhecido pelo nome de Querelle des Femmes, em reação a literatura misógina da época, que teve como estupim o famoso poema Roman de la Rose, escrito por Jean de Meung, em 1280. Eis, portanto, o objetivodeste artigo: apresentar Cristina de Pisano como uma fecunda precursora do movimento feministas moderno, destacando-se, inclusive, em comparação com outras importantes pensadores de seu tempo, por ter feito da arte de escrever uma profissão, e de a colocar a serviço da “causa feminina”.

Significatio and Senefiance, or Relics in Thomas Aquinas and Jean de Meun

This chapter asks whether Jean de Meun’s references in the Roman de la Rose to relics as a euphemism for genitals actually allude to a much larger debate in Paris between 1250 and 1280 about significatio in general, and about the religious and political significance of relics in particular, a debate in which Thomas Aquinas played an important role. Scholars have noted the influence of Ovid and Alain de Lille upon the Roman de la Rose, but have not tended to consider Jean de Meun’s scholastic sources, particularly his deployment of the theology of Thomas Aquinas.

Roman de la Rose

This chapter intends to outline, in a succinct yet critical manner, the essential elements allowing us to establish a link between Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose and the works of Dante, from the contested Fiore and Detto d’amore to the Commedia. Rather than seeking to provide an exhaustive picture, given the abundant critical literature available, this chapter addresses the following questions: 1) what is the Rose? 2) What did it represent to the generation of Tuscan poets from the second half of the 13th century, Cavalcanti and the young Dante, in particular? 3) What was its role in Dantean writing, especially in its complex poetics, politics, and organization of knowledge?

The crystal reveals the whole: medieval dreamscapes and cinematic space as virtual media

This article examines the rich visual culture of the medieval period in order to better understand dreaming as a kind of visual thought experiment, one in which ideas associated with cinema, such as embodied viewing, narrative sequencing, projection, and sensory engagement, are palpable in a range of visual and literary works. The author explores the theoretical connections between the oneiric qualities of cinema and the visual culture of medieval dreams, dealing in turn with the following themes: (i) media and mediation; (ii) projection and premonition; (iii) virtual spatiality; and (iv) automata and other animated objects. The wide swath of medieval literary dream texts, with their mobile perspectives, sensory plentitude, and gnostic mission, resonate with the cinematic in the structuring of the gaze. Investigating the codes of medieval culture provides us with an unusually rich episteme for thinking about how the dreamscapes of the Middle Ages evoke media dispositifs. Opening up these thought lines across distinct eras can help us extrapolate similarities around ways of imagining objects, spaces, sensations of embodied viewing or immersion, reminding us that our contemporary cinematic and digital landscapes are not divorced from earlier ways of seeing and believing. Whether stoking religious fear and veneration or providing sensual pleasure as in Le Roman de la Rose, the dreamworlds of the Middle Ages have bequeathed us a number of an extraordinarily rich creative works that are the imaginative building blocks of media worlds-in-the-making, as speculative in many ways as current discourses around new media.

The Afterlife of the Roman de la rose

Mobility in learned circles was a reality in the Europe of the Middle Ages, and it is only when we consider the reception of well-known works, such as the thirteenth-century Roman de la rose, in the countries where they circulated in the local language that we are able to gain a more complete understanding of their impact on literary and cultural currents even after the authors had passed away. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun’s conjoined Roman de la rose (1236, 1269-78) is without a doubt one of the foundational works of French medieval literature with over 360 extant manuscripts. Focusing on two non-French adaptations of this work that appeared within a century of the date of its composition, I show that these translations, or more accurately rewritings, enabled its survival and contributed to its sustained popularity in medieval Europe. The adaptations that are the subject of this analysis are Il Fiore, a thirteenth-century translation and adaptation into Italian often attributed to Dante, and the Romaunt of the Rose, commonly attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer. I conclude that through the medieval practice of interpretatio, the authors of the Fiore, and the Romaunt of the Rose adapt the original text to reflect their own contemporary cultural realities.

Le temps signifiant et le Moyen Âge français

An analysis of “weather events” and their meaning in works of French medieval literature – La Chanson de Roland, Le Chevalier au lion, Le Roman de la rose, Le Livre du Cuer d’amours espris and Le Debat d’entre le gris et le noir – finds different forms of interaction between the outside world and human beings. Whether a connection between man and nature is mediated by God, set by the human arrangement of or incursion into a natural setting, or left so loose as to suggest nature’s indifference to human witness, weather contributes to the picture.

Romancing the Dance

This chapter addresses the relationship between religion and dance in popular, vernacular literature. While some scholars view secular and religious works as separate, unrelated phenomena, I demonstrate how medieval romances co-opted sacred dance motifs. In these texts, dance functioned as a ritual, deifying courtly love (including troubadour lyric) and conferring a sacred aura onto courtliness. The first section uses Guillaume de Lorris’s section of Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose) to show how dance in romance championed aristocratic values (including the chivalry of medieval knights), the gift economy, and enchantment. The second section focuses on Jean de Meun’s section of Le Roman de la Rose. It shows how Jean co-opted the Rose’s dance content to critique the project of courtly love. The third section analyzes Dante’s poetry from the Paradiso (Paradise), in which the poeticization of dance enabled Dante to best express divine love.