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Swollen Woman, Shifting Canon: A Midwife's Charm and the Birth of Secular Romance Lyric

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

William D. Paden  and
Frances Freeman Paden
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Abstract

In “Tomida femina” (“A swollen woman”), a tenth-century charm written in Occitan, the vernacular of the south of France, a birthing woman and her helpers intone magical language during the most intense moments of childbirth. The poem permits us, with brief but uncommon intimacy, to imagine the lives of women long ago. It takes its place in a European tradition of birthing charms, including others written in Latin, German, and English. These charms, and in particular “Tomida femina,” provide an image of vigorous medieval women in childbirth that precedes the images of women in other secular Romance lyrics—young girls in love in the Mozarabic kharjas, idealized ladies in troubadour songs, and passionate aristocratic women in the poetry of the Occitan trobairitz.

Type
Cluster: Philology Matters
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 2 , March 2010 , pp. 306 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

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References

Charms Cited

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