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Ogling Ladies: Scopophilia in Medieval German Literature

Online ISBN:
9780813046198
Print ISBN:
9780813044187
Publisher:
University Press of Florida
Book

Ogling Ladies: Scopophilia in Medieval German Literature

Sandra Lindemann Summers
Sandra Lindemann Summers
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Published:
21 May 2013
Online ISBN:
9780813046198
Print ISBN:
9780813044187
Publisher:
University Press of Florida

Abstract

The book Ogling Ladies examines gazing female characters in a selection of medieval texts. While female scopophilia is harshly condemned in conduct literature and religious texts, female ogling is a common motif in medieval art and literature. Are artists and writers chronicling a widespread behavioral practice, or are they inventing it? The book looks at how female scopophilia functions in the medieval narrative and what effect it has on the ogling lady and her world. The theoretical framework of this project relies on psychoanalytic theory, in particular the work of the object-relations theorists D. W. Winnicott and Nancy Chodorow. This research emphasizes the importance of the mother’s early engagement with the infant, which is productive in conceptualizing the female gaze and its binary division into “desirable” and “forbidden” in medieval texts like Eneasroman, Parzival, Erec, and Iwein. Social formation is negotiated through the female gaze or, more precisely, through its splitting into an approved/approving motherly gaze and a forbidden sexual gaze. Male gender identity, it appears, remains unstable, causing male subjects to seek continued visual approval from women while simultaneously dreading their critical gaze.

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