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The Virgin's Gaze: Spectacle and Transgression in Middle English Lyrics of the Passion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Sarah Stanbury
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Abstract

Depictions of the Virgin in Middle English lyrics of the Passion are one of the most common medieval sources for accounts of a woman's gaze. Her gaze in these laments, however, runs counter to cultural proscriptions of female gazing, as illustrated in Dante, Chaucer, Alan of Lille, and Bernard of Clairvaux and as theorized in recent feminist film theory. The Marian poems complicate the gaze by repeatedly enjoining the reader to view Christ's suffering and mutilated body through an intricately mediated visual enterprise: the reader looks not only at the figure on the cross but also at the Virgin gazing, a sight that is further mediated by the poet, often in the persona of someone watching at the scene. Spectatorship in the laments sets up a complex tension between the Virgin as spectacle and the Virgin as a trasgressive subject of maternal and erotic power.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 106 , Issue 5 , October 1991 , pp. 1083 - 1093
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1991

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