McLaughlin, Megan

English

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feminist concerns as only a liability on the job market is to forget (or, at least, I think, tounderestimate) the decades of work done by medieval feminist scholars in variousacademic departments and on various search committees. We would be better served, Ithink, by taking our hope and our inspiration from their efforts. And to give up ourfeminist studies until we have "mastered" all the skills we need (when, after all, will thatday arrive?) means our relation to the past comes at a cost to our critical acuity,exchanging the politics of our modernity for what comes to stand for a scholarly heroism.And of course, as feminist Medieval Studies has shown us, heroism itself has long been agendered category.Patricia C. Ingham, University of California, Santa BarbaraON FEMINISM AND MEDIEYALISM:MUSINGS FROM A PRONE POSITIONtI don't have much opportunity for reflection in the ordinary way of things. Usually I'mtoo busy fulfilling other obligations to concentrate on this-arguably most important-one. So I suppose I'm grateful, in a way, for my recent enforced leisure. I've beenslowly recuperating from a neck injury I suffered last summer, unable to read or use thecomputer for more than a few hours a day. In fact, most of my time for the last tenmonths has been spent lying flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, and thinking. Andone of the things I've been thinking about is a set of problems that used to trouble medeeply when I was in graduate school, but which I've been too preoccupied to considersince I finished my Ph.D. and began teaching.How can we, as feminists, justify our medievalism? Why, exactly, are we sopreoccupied with medieval mystics, romances, and manuscript illumination? Does ourpoking around in the minutiae of medieval life and culture do anything to alleviateoppression and improve the situation of women in the modern world? Could it actuallybe making the situation worse, by draining energy from other activities? And finally,even if we can justify devoting our time and energy and love to the study of the MiddleAges, how should we-as feminists-be going about it?1.There are many sound intellectual reasons for studying the Middle Ages, butpersonally, I don't believe that anyone devotes her life to such a peculiar career as that ofmedievalist solely out of rational concerns. So let me speculate, in a ridiculouslysuperficial manner, about the emotional underpinnings of medievalism-at least as itexists in North America in the late twentieth century. I seem to detect in myself andmany of my colleagues, as well as in the more eager undergraduates in my classes (themedievalists of the future), a kind of complex nostalgia for the Middle Ages-a romanticattachment to certain aspects of medieval life combined with a fascinated horror of otheraspects of that life. What lies behind this nostalgia, I suspect, is the perception (probably21absorbed in childhood) of the medieval as the exotic antithesis of the modern. The worldof the Middle Ages serves as a foil for our complex and conflicted feelings about theworld in which we live today. The professional medievalist (for very good reasons)generally conceals these perceptions and feelings behind a screen of sophisticatedverbiage, but this does not make them any less influential in her life and work.In pointing out that many of us came to medieval studies out of an irrational love ofthe Middle Ages, I am not suggesting that we should sternly cast that love aside.Nostalgia for medieval society is by no means incompatible with feminism. In fact, itcan sometimes be liberating. For example, I attribute my own awakening to the fact thatthe structures and values of modern life are not natural and inevitable to my earlyventures into medieval history. Immersion in medieval studies can also offer feminists atemporary retreat from the exhausting struggles of everyday life, enabling us to emergerefreshed and eager for renewed engagement. The danger, of course, is that thetemporary retreat may also become a permanent refuge. This is what happens whenmedieval studies become an end in themselves, an escape from the modern, rather than ameans of approaching the modern from a different perspective. It seems to me that whilefeminists can be medievalists, we cannot justify a career based on escapism.II.What kind of medievalists should we be? How should our feminist politics shapewhat we do professionally? There have been several interesting discussions recently inthese pages and on medfcm-l about teaching so let me concentrate here on research.Since feminism is a political movement (or a set of political movements), it seemsaxiomatic that feminist research should have some kind of political impact-althoughthat term can and should be defined very broadly. Even those of us who study the alienand archaic world of the Middle Ages should be doing so as part of an effort to changeour own times-whatever form that effort may take.But can it really be said that our research-as currently conducted-is having muchprogressive/subversive/revolutionary effect? Most of what I write and most of what otherfeminist medievalists write is intended for an incredibly small audience of people whoare our interest in women and gender, and who also happen to know something aboutHildegard of Bingen, the Roman de Silence or the Gospel Book of Matilda of Tuscany.Our books and articles would be unintelligible, and frankly boring, to almost anyone else.That's the way the academic game is played, of course. It is only by writing for the tinyaudience of our "peers" that we can display our talents as scholarly virtuosos, get jobs,garner grants, acquire tenure, fame and fortune in the world of late-twentieth-centuryacademe. That's the way the game is played-and in many ways it's a very enjoyablegame. It's fun writing for people who understand your references and appreciate yourjokes. But it's also a dangerous game, because once you start playing it's all too easy toforget who made up the first rules and why.We may tell ourselves that our research is advancing the frontiers of knowledge (ifwe are old-fashioned Enlightenment rationalists) or that it is disrupting the masternarratives of Western culture (if we are post-modernists). We may tell ourselves that theworld will be a better place as a result, but who are we kidding? No matter howtransgressive/progressive/revolutionary our research is, it will have no political impactunless it circulates outside the charmed circle of our "peers." So long as we present our22ideas and display our knowledge primarily to other medieval feminists, all we're reallydoing is playing a game whose rules have been set by the universities and theprofessional organizations, in order to regulate the distribution of academic wealth andpower, while maintaining the equilibrium of an oppressive system.If we play the game well and have a little luck, we get to keep our jobs (or getjobs in the first place). And that is important, of course. Having an academic job givesus the status and resources to act politically in other ways: by teaching in a feministmanner, by organizing and protesting, by performing the unexpected and unacceptable inour daily lives. Best of all, it may allow us to create other kinds of work (novels? popularhistory? computer work? screenplays?) for a wider audience, using our specializedknowledge. This kind of work does not currently confer much status in the academy, butI believe it provides us with our greatest opportunity to further the feministtransformation of modern society and culture. Should this be where we go from here?Megan McLaughlin, University ofIllinoisRETHINKING MEDIEVAL FRENCH GRADUATE STUDIES/SYLLABUSES IN LIGHTOF GENDER ISSUEStOver the past five years, new theoretical and historical perspectives on the status ofgender (tied both to my own scholarly interests and to those of my graduate students)have changed in important ways how medieval French literature is taught at theUniversity of Pennsylvania. When Jane Burns first invited me to contribute to this issueof MFN, I decided that I wanted to respond in a "personal" manner, i.e. that I wanted toexplain in quite specific terms how my and my students' awareness of gender issueswithin the context of medieval French literature has resulted in newly conceived graduateseminars. I therefore beg the indulgence of MFN's readers for the specificity of whatfollows.The four base texts I use for my introductory seminar are now configured in such away as to allow gender to emerge as one of the focal points of the seminar. During thefall semester, these were La Chanson de Roland, Chretien de Troyes's Chevalier de laCharrette, Aucassin et Nicolette, and Christine de Pizan's Cent Ballades d'amant et dedame. The seminar, of course, has several foci: each text is read as a "coherent" literaryentity (with discussion of how the notion of literary coherence has changed over time);each text is read in its particular socio-historical context; each text is read in terms of thedifferent "anthropology" that gives rise to it and that it embodies. In addition, the four(or more) texts are sequentially configured in a number of (hopefully) suggestive ways.With regard to gender, this can involve starting with the opposing but complementarydepictions of women in "tangential" but essential roles in the Roland (Bramimonde andAude), before moving to the central status of Guenievre in the Charrette, first as simpleobject of desire, then as complex desiring subject. The gender reversals of Godefroy de23

On Feminism and Medievalism: Musings from a Prone Position

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On Feminism and Medievalism: Musings from a Prone Position

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