An epic redemption: Re-reading some aberrant eleventh- century bodies

Hyde, Andrew P (2020). An epic redemption: Re-reading some aberrant eleventh- century bodies. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

The text of the Junius 11 manuscript and the illustrations accompanying it are marked by an apparent discord, whereby the ecclesiastical nature of the work often seems threatened by the eroticism of the images. This thesis sets out to explain the disjunction, not by eliding it but rather showing it to be highly significant.
To uncover the attitudes prevailing towards the corporeal (both erotic and numinous), the analysis undertakes a close examination of late tenth-/early eleventh-century conceptions of the body, especially those informed by the discourses of the Church. Such discourses frequently did pose the body in erotic formations, but in most of these it is possible to demonstrate multiple frameworks of social control being applied to them to determine correct meaning. The Junius Eve, however, does not conform to such structuralist paradigms. Her erotic subversion is driven by something beyond, even antithetical to, expositions of exterior power advanced by, for example, Michel Foucault or Judith Butler.
To compensate for such structuralist lack, this thesis advances a psychoanalytic inflexion to develop a fusion that resolves the otherwise incongruous eroticism in the Junius Eve. The result is an Eve that completely subverts the text in a celebration of the libidinal.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):