Late Medieval Image Debate in English and French Literature, 1160–1500

Yun Ni, Ph.D. (2019), Harvard University, is currently an assistant professor of English at Peking University. Her research focuses on medieval English literature, political thought, and intellectual history.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart 1 Political Iconoclasm: Sainthood and Kingship1 “The King’s Two Bodies” in Light of Twelfth-Century Neo-Platonism and Political Theory1 “The King’s Two Bodies” and Twelfth-Century Political Theory2 “The Queen’s Two Bodies” in Twelfth-Century Realpolitik3 The Two Bodies Theory and Twelfth-Century Neo-Platonism2 The Queen’s Two Bodies in Clemence of Barking’s Vie de Sainte Catherine1 Introduction2 The Sacred and the Secular in the Vie3 The Vie in Sacred History: Thomas Becket and Catherine in Christ-Centered and Law-Centered Kingship4 Torture and Separation of the Queen’s Two Bodies5 Afterlife and Union of Bodies in Christ-Centered Rule6 Conclusion3 The Mutilated Two Bodies in Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligès1 Introduction2 The Queen’s Illusory Dynastic Body3 Torture and the Merging of the Queen’s “Two” Bodies4 Euhemerism and Idolatry: Semiotics of Entombment and Reliquary5 Exhuming Fenice, Translating Relics6 The King’s Body Idolized and Rendered Divine7 The Vie and Cligès Compared8 ConclusionPart 2 Psychological Iconoclasm: Negative Theology and Interiority4 Idols and Phantasms in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Philosophical Thought and Negative Theology1 Phantasms as Idols of the Mind in Negative Theology2 Aristotelian Fantasie in Thirteenth-Century Scholastic Thought3 Rethinking Platonic Form and Matter with Aristotle5 Form and Matter in Le Roman de la Rose1 Introduction2 Form and Matter in the Rose3 Guillaume de Lorris, the Constructor of Idols: Enclosure and Symmetry4 Jean de Meun’s Iconoclasm: Rewriting Narcissus’s Fountain5 Pygmalion and Narcissus Are Alike6 The Sack of the Castle and the Plucking of the Rose7 Conclusion6 “Gafe Me Space and Time to Behalde It”: Images and Words in Julian of Norwich’s A Revelation of Love1 Introduction2 The Apophatic, the Affective, and the Ascetic in Julian’s Intellectual Context3 God’s Absolute Presence and Necessary Absence (Revelations 1–4)4 Competition between Words and Images (Revelations 5–9)5 Christ’s Infinite Body (Revelations 10–12)6 Hermeneutics of the Flesh: Spatiality in the Lord-and-Servant Parable7 Mutual Enclosure and Continuous Creation8 God outside the Mutual Enclosure9 ConclusionPart 3 Cultic Iconoclasm: the “Body” of Christ7 The Wycliffite Ideology of “Looking”1 Words against Images: the Wycliffite Bible Translation2 John Wycliffe against Himself: Tractatus de mandatis divinis3 Transubstantiation, Consubstantiation, and the Lollards4 Arundel’s Constitutions and Censorship8 Iconography, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Man of Law’s Tale” and “The Second Nun’s Tale”1 Introduction2 Idolatry under Control: “The Second Nun’s Tale”3 The Iconographic Custance: from a Potential Idol to the Living Image of Christ4 God’s Disembodied Hand as an Anti-Image5 Custance and Cecilia Compared: the Living Image vs. the Dead Saint6 Conclusion9 Christ’s Real Presence: Signs and Referents in The Croxton Play of the Sacrament1 Introduction2 Sacrament and Theatre, Jews and Lollards, in the Croxton Play3 Host Desecration: Negating the Real Presence of God4 Unregulated Ritual and Unrestrained Divinity5 Iconoclasm against the Arch-Image Reconsidered6 Seeing, Believing, and Clerical Surveillance7 ConclusionConclusionBibliographyIndex