Corps Mystique, Corps Sacre Textual Transfigurations of the Body from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century Francoise Jaouen, Benjamin Semple

The body as erotic object pervades Western literature. This volume examines a variety of textual incarnations of the sacred and mystical body in French texts of the Medieval and Early Modern period. Articles examine Old French hagiography, epic and romance; Renaissance court ballet; seventeenth-century political treatises; memoirs of royal wedding ceremonies; and utopian, satirical, philosophical, and didactic literature. The intellectual scope of the volume covers topics as diverse as medieval scholasticism, seventeenth-century political thought, relations between representations of the male and female body, and the theatricalization of the body.