Las Representaciones Literarias de Cuatro Pecados en Algunas Obras Ibéricas de la Edad Media

Date of Award

Summer 8-15-2012

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

Romance Languages and Literature: Hispanic Studies

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Type

Dissertation

Abstract

In this dissertation, I examine how medieval Iberian literature responded to the various European discourses that participated in and informed the intellectual construction of four different acts that the medieval Catholic Church interpreted as sinful (sex, prostitution, incest, and leprosy). I retrace the discursive relationships between the literary texts that I read and a number of intellectual contexts, from the theological to the medical, and from the legal to the hagiographical. I examine these relationships in the confines of three different centuries, from the 12th to the 14th. To create a more focused examination of the representations of sin in the Iberian texts that I read, I explore the positive characterizations these sinful acts receive in literature. While the representation of sinful acts often serves the function of negative exemplarity in medieval literature, I argue that the narrative construction of these same acts could also contribute positive consequences to the human experience of them. Each of the four chapters of this dissertation focuses on one represented "sin" and discusses its construction in the literary texts in light of the intellectual discourses contemporary with the context of the composition of these same literary works.

Language

English (en)

Chair and Committee

Nina C Davis

Committee Members

Elzbieta Sklodowska, Joseph Schraibman, Bret Gustafson, Bárbara Boloix

Comments

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K73R0QT6

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