Table Of Content

THE NEW MIDDLE AGES BONNIE WHEELER, Series Editor The New Middle Agesis a series dedicated to transdisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections. PUBLISHED BY PALGRAVE: Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Chaucer’s Pardoner and Gender Theory: Bodies Patronage, and Piety of Discourse edited by Gavin R. G. Hambly by Robert S. Sturges The Ethics of Nature in the Middle Ages: On Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on Boccaccio’s Poetaphysics Medieval European and Heian Japanese Women by Gregory B. Stone Writers edited by Barbara Stevenson and Presence and Presentation: Women in the Cynthia Ho Chinese Literati Tradition by Sherry J. Mou Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: by Laurel Amtower Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of by Constant J. Mews Investiture edited by Stewart Gordon Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault Representing Rape in Medieval and Early by Philipp W. Rosemann Modern Literature edited by Elizabeth Robertson and For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Christine M. Rose Burgh by Frances A. Underhill Same Sex Love and Desire among Women in the Middle Ages Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in edited by Francesca Canadé Sautman and the Middle Ages Pamela Sheingorn edited by Cindy L. Carlson and Angela Jane Weisl Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages: Ocular Desires Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon by Suzannah Biernoff England by Mary Dockray-Miller Listen, Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth- Middle Ages Century Woman edited by Constant J. Mews edited by Bonnie Wheeler Science, the Singular, and the Question of The Postcolonial Middle Ages Theology edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen by Richard A. Lee, Jr. Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to Eloquent Virgins: From Thecla to Joan of Arc the Renaissance by Maud Burnett McInerney edited by Thelma S. Fenster and Clare A. Lees The Persistence of Medievalism: Narrative Adventures in Contemporary Culture Malory’sMorte D’ Arthur:Remaking by Angela Jane Weisl Arthurian Tradition by Catherine Batt Capetian Women edited by Kathleen D. Nolan The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature Joan of Arc and Spirituality edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, edited by Ann W. Astell and Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Warren Bonnie Wheeler Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England Southern Low Countries 1350–1500 edited by Ellen E. Kittell and by Kathleen Kamerick Mary A. Suydam Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality, and Charlemagne’s Mustache: And Other Cultural Literary Structure in Late Medieval England Clusters of a Dark Age by Elizabeth Scala by Paul Edward Dutton Creating Community with Food and Drink in Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight Merovingian Gaul in Medieval Text and Image by Bonnie Effros edited by Emma Campbell and Robert Mills Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses: Image and Empire Queering Medieval Genres by Anne McClanan by Tison Pugh Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism Objects, Texts, Images by L. Michael Harrington edited by Désirée G. Koslin and Janet The Middle Ages at Work Snyder edited by Kellie Robertson and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady Michael Uebel edited by Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons Chaucer’s Jobs by David R. Carlson Isabel La Católica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays Medievalism and Orientalism: Three Essays on edited by David A. Boruchoff Literature, Architecture and Cultural Identity by John M. Ganim Homoeroticism and Chivalry: Discourses of Male Same-Sex Desire in the Fourteenth Century Queer Love in the Middle Ages by Richard E. Zeikowitz by Anna Klosowska Portraits of Medieval Women: Family, Marriage, Performing Women in the Middle Ages: Sex, and Politics in England 1225–1350 Gender, and the Iberian Lyric by Linda E. Mitchell by Denise K. Filios Necessary Conjunctions: The Social Self in The Theology of Work: Peter Damian and the Medieval England Medieval Religious Renewal Movement by David Gary Shaw by Patricia Ranft Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages On the Purification of Women: Churching in edited by Kathryn Starkey and Northern France,1100–1500 Horst Wenzel by Paula M. Rieder Medieval Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Jeremy Writers of the Reign of Henry II: Twelve duQuesnay Adams, Volumes 1 and 2 Essays edited by Stephanie Hayes-Healy edited by Ruth Kennedy and Simon Meecham-Jones False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature Lonesome Words: The Vocal Poetics of the by Elizabeth Allen Old English Lament and theAfrican-American Blues Song Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity by M.G. McGeachy in the Middle Ages by Michael Uebel Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early by Anne Bagnell Yardley Modern Cultures: New Essays edited by Lawrence Besserman The Flight from Desire: Augustine and Ovid to Chaucer Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages by Robert R. Edwards edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers Mindful Spirit in Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth D.Kirk Representing Righteous Heathens in Late edited by Bonnie Wheeler Medieval England by Frank Grady Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Byzantine Dress: Representations of Secular Clothwork,and Other CulturalImaginings Dress in Eighth-to-Twelfth Century edited by E. Jane Burns Painting by Jennifer L. Ball Was the Bayeux Tapestry Made in France?: The Case for St. Florent of Saumur The Laborer’s Two Bodies: Labor and the by George Beech ‘Work’ of the Text in Medieval Britain, 1350–1500 Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the by Kellie Robertson Middle Ages by Erin L. Jordan The Dogaressa of Venice, 1250–1500: Wife and Icon Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in by Holly S. Hurlburt Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles by Jeremy Jerome Cohen Logic, Theology, and Poetry in Boethius, Abelard, and Alan of Lille: Words in the Medieval Go-betweens and Chaucer’s Absence of Things Pandarus by Eileen C. Sweeney by Gretchen Mieszkowski The Surgeon in Medieval English Literature The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making by Jeremy J. Citrome Process by Albrecht Classen Temporal Circumstances: Form and History in the Canterbury Tales Claustrophilia: The Erotics of Enclosure in by Lee Patterson Medieval Literature Erotic Discourse and Early English Religious by Cary Howie Writing by Lara Farina Cannibalism in High Medieval English Literature Odd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval by Heather Blurton Literature by Sachi Shimomura The Drama of Masculinity and Medieval English Guild Culture On Farting: Language and Laughter in the by Christina M. Fitzgerald Middle Ages by Valerie Allen Chaucer’s Visions of Manhood Women and Medieval Epic: Gender,Genre, and by Holly A. Crocker the Limits of Epic Masculinity edited by Sara S. Poor and Jana K. The Literary Subversions of Medieval Women Schulman by Jane Chance Race, Class, and Gender in “Medieval” Cinema Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and edited by Lynn T. Ramey and Tison Pugh Literature by Scott Lightsey Allegory and Sexual Ethics in the High Middle Ages by Noah D. Guynn England and Iberia in the Middle Ages, 12th-15th Century: Cultural, Literary, and Political Exchanges edited by María Bullón-Fernández MANMADE MARVELS IN MEDIEVAL CULTURE AND LITERATURE Scott Lightsey MANMADEMARVELSINMEDIEVALCULTUREANDLITERATURE Copyright © Scott Lightsey, 2007. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-7441-9 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproducedin any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case ofbrief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-53502-6 ISBN 978-0-230-60564-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230605640 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: August 2007 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Debra If in his Studie he hath so much care To’hang all old strange things, let his wife beware ——John Donne, The Antiquary This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS List of Figures xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction:Clever Devices 1 1. By Angel’s Hand: “Piers Plowman” and London’s Crowning Gesture 27 2. Chaucer and the Culture of Commodified Mirabilia 55 3. Chaucer’s Body: The Subject of Technology 81 4. Monstrous Body Politic(s): Alexander in theConfessio Amantis 107 5. Craft and Idolatry: “Sotylle”Devices in Mandeville’s Travels 137 Conclusion: Marvelous Craft 159 Notes 163 Bibliography 191 Index 205