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Call for Abstracts, Kalamazoo 2006

“Sexual Education in Medieval Literature”

This panel seeks papers that explore the consequences of young people’s sexual education*or lack thereof*across genres in medieval literature. While certain saints’ narratives use the young virgin’s desire to avoid sexual initiation as a way to express his or her exemplary distance from lay society, the virgin’s desire to avoid marriage and its consummation suggest an awareness of sexuality that characters in other genres do not display. Most notably, Old French fabliaux suggest the problems that ensue as a result of attempts to educate young women and men about their gendered sexual roles. While many fabliaux suggest that human sexuality cannot be contained by prescriptive gender-education, others explore a feature common to romance, gender’s tendency to postpone or disrupt sexual encounters. This panel thus also seeks papers that explore the function of the “go-between” in medieval narratives, looking at the ways that old women, panderers, or even bawds provide “forbid!
 den” sexual education to men and women who might not otherwise be able to gain such needed knowledge.

Please send 1 page abstracts to:

Holly A. Crocker
Department of English
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208

Hcrocker_at_gwm.sc.edu

e-mail submissions welcome!

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Received on Sun Sep 04 2005 - 08:46:13 EDT