Odd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval Literature (The New Middle Ages)

"This study traces how medieval audiences judge bodies (as saved or damned, human or monstrous) from Doomsday visions to beauty contests. It exposes how medieval texts manipulate narrative time and its visual evidence, like marked bodies. Anxieties about time, death, and Doomsday transform bodies (magically or literally) even in romances. Employing cultural and formalist approaches, this study breaks new ground on the historical obsession about ends and changes, reflected in different genres spanning several hundred years. It lays crucial foundations for the study of bodies - judged by deformity, gender, and other viewed perspectives - in medieval narrative and beyond."--Jacket Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction: Time and the Audiences of Visual Judgment....Pages 1-11 Visualizing Judgment in Anglo-Saxon England: Illumination, Metaphor, and Christ III....Pages 13-38 “Sum Vnto Bale and Sum to Blis”: From Binary Judgment to Romance Closure....Pages 39-84 “Unto Hir Lyves Ende”: Time and the Wife of Bath’s Remembered Bodies....Pages 85-125 Conclusion: Romance Ends, or Transforming Closure in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight....Pages 127-160 Back Matter....Pages 161-198