"La Belle Helene de Constantinople": The text of the female body in a fourteenth-century chanson de geste.
Item
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Title
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"La Belle Helene de Constantinople": The text of the female body in a fourteenth-century chanson de geste.
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Identifier
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AAI3024804
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identifier
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3024804
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Creator
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Jones-Wagner, Valentina Aimee.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Scott D. Westrem
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Date
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2001
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Comparative | Literature, Medieval | Religion, General
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Abstract
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This thesis analyzes a late medieval text, focusing on the image of the female body. La Belle Helene de Constantinople, a fourteenth-century chanson de geste, equates sexual pollution with religious pollution when it identifies incest with paganism and calls to mind the anthropological theory Mary Douglas. She sees the body as a symbolic stand-in for its community, which means that threats to the body are threats to the community, and its purification cleanses the community.;In La Belle Helene, the body under attack is the female body exposed to incest, mutilation, deprivation and, finally, made whole through miraculous healing. Woman is cast in the role of the victim and has to keep her body pure to guard the integrity of her "community." The poem emphasizes the provenance of the Roman pope; and the image of incest is used twice: it represents the threat from the Saracens as well as the schism between the Eastern and the Western churches.;Saracen men either convert to become Christian heroes (or hermits), or they remain pagan brutes to be exterminated. Saracen princesses secretly long to be baptized, fall in love with Christian knights, and, as Christian wives, contribute to the strengthening of Western secular and religious leadership. The whiteness of their skin signals their allegiance to the "true" faith, and their promiscuity makes the enemy lines permeable, literally and figuratively.;Through most of the epic, the female protagonist is portrayed as persecuted and suffering, until she is glorified in her miraculous healing. This is in accordance with Christian theology, which advocates physical suffering as spiritually purifying. Helene's healing stands for the healing of Western Christianity: Rome has become reunited with Jerusalem and reconciled with Constantinople. When her community is safe and her body is healed, Helene's mission is complete and she soon dies. Her story and history are left in the hands of the Roman pope and her offspring, Saint Martin and Saint Brice, pillars of saintly patriarchy.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
