Holy harlots : authority, gender, and the body in medieval English hagiography

This doctoral dissertation aims at describing the representation of holy harlots (Mary Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, Pelagia, Thai's, Afra of Augsburg) in medieval English hagiography. These saints are unique representatives that combine both extremes of the feminine in the medieval imaginaire: she is both, as a saint, the Virgin Mary, the pure and virtuous woman, and, in her past as a prostitute, Eve, the evil female tempter who led all mankind to destruction. The initial question of this thesis is how did hagiographers negotiate the representation of a formerly sinful, sexually active, long- living woman as an authoritative saint? This thesis aims at finding elements of answer to this question, investigating the intersections between gender and authority in the saints' lives of repentant prostitutes in all the vernaculars of medieval England: Old English, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English. It posits that the portrayal of holy harlots' authority and gender is dependent upon social, religious and literary shifts during the medieval period. My contention is that the harlot's gender portrayal changes over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, due notably to the rise of affective piety and the important influence of the romance genre over hagiography. In Anglo-Saxon England, the harlot's gender changes with the saint's conversion: a woman beforehand, her gender is portrayed after her repentance as ambiguous in order for her to become a saint. Her authority derives from her own sanctity in this case. From the twelfth century onward, however, the harlot, now often turned into a beautiful and landed romance lady, is more and more represented as a woman throughout her life, and becomes after her conversion a Bride of Christ. In this way, the dangerously free woman who roamed the streets and prostituted her body becomes less threatening after her conversion, being (re-)inscribed within the male dominated institution of marriage. She now draws her authoritative stance from her gendered intimacy with Christ: although she submits to Christ as his bride, she also gains greater authority than before by way of her privileged relationship with the Savior.

Enhancement of writings on a damaged medieval manuscript using ultraviolet imaging

The Minutarium Majus, a register dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, was transferred by the paleographers responsible for its transcription to the Institute of Forensic Science of the University of Lausanne with the aim of enhancing portions of text that had become worn away and illegible. The manuscript had suffered from deterioration and damage for different unknown reasons, but most likely because of the colour instability of the ink, contaminations, storage conditions and repeated human manipulation. A total of 69 areas of text, ranging in size from just a few words to full pages, were photographically recorded under both white and ultraviolet (UV) light illumination. UV illumination observed in the visible range proved to be efficient in detecting the writings. Most of the texts could thus be successfully transcribed by the paleographers. The technique proved to be extremely useful for the exposure of damaged medieval writings.

Body, Disease and Treatment in a Changing World. Latin texts and contexts in ancient and medieval medicine (Proceedings of the ninth International Conference «Ancient Latin Medical Texts», Hulme Hall, University of Manchester, 5th-8th September 2007),

This volume reflects a variegated and fruitful dialogue between classical and medieval philologists and historians of science, philosophy, literature and language as well as of medicine - the diverse range of interests that the history of medicine in the Graeco-Roman world and the medieval West continues to stimulate and draw on. A recurrent theme is the transformation of medical knowledge in different languages, literary forms and cultural milieux. Several papers concern editorial work in progress on unpublished texts, available only in manuscript or early printed editions. Ce recueil met en dialogue des spécialistes des textes médicaux latins de l'Antiquité et du Moyen Âge. Certaines analyses adoptent une approche sociolinguistique, d'autres s'intéressent à des questions de transmission et de réception, d'autres enfin livrent des études sur le lexique médical. Mais toutes concourent à éclairer une histoire culturelle de la médecine qui s'inscrit dans un monde en mutation. With a preface by D. R. Langslow, and contributions by M. Baldin, J. P. Barragán Nieto, P. P. Conde Parrado, D. Crismani, M. Cronier, C. de la Rosa Cubo, A. Ferraces Rodríguez, K.-D. Fischer, P. Gaillard-Seux, A. García González, V. Gitton-Ripoll, G. Haverling, F. Le Blay, B. Maire, G. Marasco, A. I. Martín Ferreira, I. Mazzini, F. Messina, Ph. Mudry, V. Nutton, M. Pardon-Labonnelie, R. Passarella, M. J. Pérez Ibáñez, S. Sconocchia, A. M. Urso, M. E. Vázquez Buján, and H. von Staden.

Late Oligocene Larger Foraminifera from Nosara (Nicoya Península, Costa Rica) and Windward (Carriacou, Lesser Antilles), calibrated by 87Sr/86Sr isotope stratigraphy.

ABSTRACT: The Late Oligocene first occurrence of Miogypsina gunteri Cole and Miogypsina tani Drooger is verified in the light of larger foraminiferal assemblages from Nosara (Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica) and Windward (Carriacou, Grenada, Lesser Antilles). At Windward, they co-occur with planktonic foraminifera and nannofossils studied by earlier workers. 87Sr/86Sr isotope ratios were measured in calcite of larger foraminifera at both sites to determine independent absolute ages of the two outcrops. Late Oligocene shallow water formations unconformably overlie Paleocene-Eocene distal turbidites and siliceous shales in the outcrops in Costa Rica. The shallow-water lithostratigraphy includes near shore volcanic sandstones that alternate with sandy bioclastic limestones. The latter have yielded rich assemblages of larger foraminifera that have been studied in oriented sections, SEM for split material and polished rock thin sections for transmitted light and cathodoluminescence (CL) observation. The association of larger foraminifera includes Heterostegina antillea Cushman, Miogypsina tani Drooger, Miogypsina gunteri Cole, Miogypsina c.f (Miolepidocyclina) panamensis (Cushman), Miogypsina sp., Lepidocyclina (nephrolepidina) vaughani Cushman, Lepidocyclina yurnagurensis Cushman, Lepidocyclina undosa Cushman. At Windward, scattered outcrops of the Belvedere Formation expose mass flow deposits rich in larger foraminifera associated with an early late Oligocene (NP24) planktonic foraminifa assemblage. Planktonic foraminifera and nanno-fossils recovered in rocks slightly downsection indicate an upper Middle Oligocene age. Larger foraminifera species collected just north of Windward include Lepidocyclina undosa Cushman and Miogypsina gunteri Cole. The 87Sr/86Sr ratio was measured in 11 specimens of megalosphaeric Lepidocyclina spp., mechanically extracted from 2 rock samples collected at Punta Peladas (Costa Rica) Ratios range from 0.709088 to 0.708196, which correspond to a model age of 27.4 to 24.94 Ma. Very similar ratios, ranging from 0.708150 to 0.708167 were obtained from Windward Village (Carriacou). All measured 87Sr/86Sr ratios fall within a Chattian (Late Oligocene) age. Nannofossils, planktonic foraminifera and identical 87Sr/86Sr ratios from Punta Peladas and Windward clearly indicate a Chattian (Upper Oligocene) first occurrence of Miogypsina gunteri and Miogypsina tani and confirm this age range for the other larger foraminifera cited above. The first occurrence of Miogypsina gunteri in the lower Athe upper Aquitanian as proposed by European workers cannot be confirmed.

Contrast : a concept in language and its development in Medieval Spanish

The purpose of this PhD thesis is to investigate a semantic relation present in the connection of sentences (more specifically: propositional units). This relation, which we refer to as contrast, includes the traditional categories of adversatives - predominantly represented by the connector but in English and pero in Modern Spanish - and concessives, prototypically verbalised through although / aunque. The aim is to describe, analyse and - as far as possible - to explain the emergence and evolution of different syntactic schemes marking contrast during the first three centuries of Spanish (also referred to as Castilian) as a literary language, i.e., from the 13th to the 15th century. The starting point of this question is a commonplace in syntax, whereby the semantic and syntactic complexity of clause linkage correlates with the degree of textual elaboration. In historical linguistics, i.e., applied to the phylogeny of a language, it is commonly referred to as the parataxis hypothesis A crucial part of the thesis is dedicated by the definition of contrast as a semantic relation. Although the label contrast has been used in this sense, mainly in functional grammar and text linguistics, mainstream grammaticography and linguistics remain attached to the traditional categories adversatives and concessives. In opposition to this traditional view, we present our own model of contrast, based on a pragma-semantic description proposed for the analysis of adversatives by Oswald Ducrot and subsequently adopted by Ekkehard König for the analysis of concessives. We refine and further develop this model in order for it to accommodate all, not just the prototypical instances of contrast in Spanish, arguing that the relationship between adversatives and concessives is a marked opposition, i.e., that the higher degree of semantic and syntactic integration of concessives restricts some possible readings that the adversatives may have, but that this difference is almost systematically neutralised by contextual factors, thus justifying the assumption of contrast as a comprehensive onomasiological category. This theoretical focus is completed by a state-of-the-question overview attempting to account for all relevant forms in which contrast is expressed in Medieval Spanish, with the aid of lexicographic and grammaticographical sources, and an empirical study investigating the expression of corpus in a corpus study on the textual functions of contrast in nine Medieval Spanish texts: Cantar de Mio Cid, Libro de Alexandre, Milagros de Nuestra Sehora, Estoria de Espana, Primera Partida, Lapidario, Libro de buen amor, Conde Lucanor, and Corbacho. This corpus is analysed using quantitative and qualitative tools, and the study is accompanied by a series of methodological remarks on how to investigate a pragma-semantic category in historical linguistics. The corpus study shows that the parataxis hypothesis fails to prove from a statistical viewpoint, although a qualitative analysis shows that the use of subordination does increase over time in some particular contexts.