all for Submissions for an Edited Volume: Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture
Call for Submissions for an Edited Volume: Wounds and
Wound Repair in Medieval Culture
Title: ‘His brest tobrosten’: Wounds and Wound Repair in
Medieval Culture
Editors: Kelly DeVries and Larissa Tracy
In The Knight’s Tale, Chaucer’s Knight describes the
shafts of spears shivering to pieces on thick shields, the ‘helmes they tohewen
and toshrede;/ Out brest the blood with stierne stremes rede;/ With myghty
maces the bones they tobreste’ (lines 2609–11). Yet, for all this bloodshed no
one dies, and the only malice and hatred is between the two rivals who hunt
each other down and with ‘jelous strokes on hir helmes byte;/ Out rennet blood
on bothe hir sydes rede’ (lines 2634–5). Even in the final tally after Arcite’s
fall, ‘Al were they soore yhurt, and namely oon, that with a spere was thirled
his brest boon’ (lines 2709–10); some have broken bones, some apply salves and
medicines, and some drink sage to save their limbs. The Knight’s description of
Arcite’s injuries is far more graphic than the scenes of battle. When Arcite
falls he lies as if dead, ‘His brest tobrosten with his sadel-bowe./ As blak he
lay as any cole or crowe,/ So was the blood yronned in his face’ (lines
2691–3). The clotted blood, despite the efforts of leechcraft, decays and
cannot be drained through any medical techniques, and the poison cannot be
expelled:
‘The pipes of his longes gonne to swelle,/ And every
lacerte in his brest adoun/ Is shent with venym and corrupcioun’ (lines 2752–4).
It is a gruesome and painful death, fraught with lurid detail lacking in the
earlier scenes of battle.
The spectacle of the wounded body figured prominently in
the Middle Ages, from images of Christ’s wounds on the cross, to the ripped and
torn bodies of tortured saints who miraculously heal through divine
intervention, to graphic accounts of battlefield and tournament wounds and
literary episodes of fatal or not so fatal wounds. This volume seeks to bring
together essays devoted to the idea of either causing wounds, wounds and/or
wound repair from a wide range of sources and disciplines including arms and
armaments, military history, medical history, literature, art history,
hagiography, and archaeology across medieval and early modern Europe.
*Please submit abstracts of 250 words by May 20, 2012 to
either Larissa Tracy (kattracy@comcast.net
or tracylc@longwood.edu) or Kelly
DeVries (KDeVries@loyola.edu).
*Please include your affiliation and brief bio with your
abstract.