Broken bodies and singing tongues: gender and voice in the Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 23 Psychomachia

Extract

The relationship between the book and the body in the Middle Ages is complex and has been the focus of much recent attention. At a most basic level the dead, dismembered, yet living body of the book was united with the bodies of author, scribe, artist and reader in the act of reading. Medieval readers from the age of Augustine on left their marks in books in the form of glosses, personal comments, sketches, signatures, and the traces of kisses, caresses, or of simple repeated readings that have worn away parts of numerous illustrations. Michael Camille, in particular, has explored the sensual nature of the relationship between book and reader in the act of reading. Perhaps nowhere is this union of bodies so vividly enacted as in the works of the fourth-century Spanish poet Prudentius, whose poems remained extremely popular for centuries. They were copied, translated, rearranged and illustrated to suit the needs of a variety of patrons and readers across medieval Europe.