Artikel
"The satire of the poet is a pregnancy" : pregnant poets, body metaphors, and cultural production in Medieval Ireland
Verfasst von:
Mulligan, Amy C.
in:
The Journal of English and Germanic philology
Champaign:
2009
,
481 - 505 S.
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| Einrichtung: | Ariadne | Wien |
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| Verfasst von: | Mulligan, Amy C. |
| In: | The Journal of English and Germanic philology |
| Jahr: | 2009 |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Beschreibung: | |
| In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva writes that “significance is indeed inherent in the human body.” 1 In other words, the ability to signify, to create and perform verbal discourse, is a corporeal process. This is a tenet that medieval Irish poets and storytellers understood long before Kristeva and other modern theorists drew attention to the somatic nature of language and text. From the narrative accounts and theoretical tracts that focus on bodily aspects of language production, to the highly corporeal portraits of the famed poets themselves, medieval Irish textual culture demonstrates that the act of signifying, specifically of producing verse, is very much “inherent in the human body.” Medieval Irish scribes record, for instance, that by gnawing on the thumb he burned on a poet’s salmon of knowledge the hero Finn mac Cumaill accessed his divinatory powers and skills sacred to poets, and then delivered this wisdom in poetic form; 2 the poet Néde raised deforming blisters on the body of the king by directing a satire, or anti-praise poem, at him. 3 Imbas forosnai, a kind of poetic inspiration that reveals whatever the fili, or learned visionary poet, needs to know, is an intricate act requiring both chewing on raw flesh ( teinm laide) and reciting chants in a specific way. 4 Furthermore, there is an extensive collection of texts attending to the bodies, births, and transforming rebirths of legendary poets who, as Patrick Ford has aptly put it, are “blind, dumb and ugly.” 5 All of these examples stress the felt corporeality of poets and poetic composition. This article seeks to address one particularly rich manifestation of poetic corporeality, the association of poetic utterances with pregnancy and the ... | |
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