Call for Papers:

Special Session: “Metaphors and Allegories of the Body and Disease” at the 43^rd International Congress on Medieval Studies

at Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 8-11, 2008. All submissions may be considered for a future collection of essays on this topic

spanning 700-1700.

Please submit 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers by September 1 via e-mail to Jennifer Vaught at [log in to unmask] or by post to:

Jennifer Vaught

Dept. of English

PO Box 44691

University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Lafayette, LA 70504

Special Session Description:

This session will examine how metaphors and allegories of the body and disease inform medieval and early modern discourses. Susan Sontag in Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors points to the vital connection between metaphors and bodily illnesses in contemporary works. Medieval and early modern texts–a number of which were written during the plague years–further underscore the interlacing of metaphors of the body and disease in a wide range of literary and cultural contexts. The very term ‘consumption,’ for instance, highlights the link between a bodily disease and an economic practice; likewise, the common phrase, ‘body politic’ emphasizes the metaphorical connection between individual bodies and the larger political, sometimes illness-ridden spheres they inhabit. The allegorical mode that was widely established and practiced by literary writers such as Langland and Spenser during the medieval and early modern periods also lends itself to such figurative representations of the body and disease. The overall goal of this session is to illustrate the extent to which a global awareness of bodily ailments from 700-1700 informs a variety of texts and contexts during this period. The palpable anxieties among writers, readers, and audience members in response to diseases so prevalent before the advent of modern medicine mirror contemporary fears in response to the threat of pandemic illnesses such as AIDS and the Avian flu. The very metaphors we continue to use today remind us of the dis-ease we inherit from our medieval and early modern predecessors.