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Article ID: CBB001420806

Morphologies humaines au chaos: poils, cornes et appendices dans la litterature narrative et normative du Moyen Âge (2012)

Micrologus: Natura, Scienze e Società Medievali
Volume: 20
Pages: 43--61
Publication date: 2012
Language: French

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Article in a special issue, “Estremità e escrescenze dei corpi / Extremities and Excrescences of the Body”

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Hair Science and religion Nature and its relationship to culture; human-nature relationships Human body Sex differences Occult sciences Medieval

The exploration through several narrative systems (both didactic and non didactic) allows us to observe the process of protuberances. In the form of an abundant hairiness, of horns and tails, whose protuberance is produced by extreme elegance; in the form, finally, of a proliferation of sexual genders, rivaling the sexed distribution of the Genesis book, the body finds itself deprived of its order, torn from common nature, a risky stage of transition. Yet the narrative logic guarantees a return to order: the man, who became wild and hairy, provided with immoderate excrescences, becomes apparently civilized again through a ritual of polishing; women, waving horns and tails under the watchful eye of the preacher, may return to the desired morphology by submitting to the norm of folding. The imaginary of protuberance is full of as a starting point of aberrant behaviours and as a sure term of a happy inclusion within the communitarian space, as long as a symbolic return to order.

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Article Pastoureau, Michel (2012) Les cornes, les poils, les oreilles et la queue. Se déguiser en animal dans l'Occident médiéval. Micrologus: Natura, Scienze e Società Medievali (p. 3). unapi

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