Appel à contribution – Noble Suffering : Representations of the Experience of Pain

Sponsor: Medica: The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages

This session will examine the redemptive potential for pain and suffering as evidenced in the material and literary culture of medieval Europe. We invite proposals that investigate portrayals of both emotional and physical suffering in religious and secular art and literature. Speakers are encouraged to explore representations of redemptive pain as expressed in images, objects, and texts from a broad range of perspectives, from saint to sinner, romantic hero to base criminal.

Possible topics include:

Images of pain in religious art and texts, such as renditions of scripture, the lives of the saints, etc.

Representations of pain in literature, such as romance, drama, fabliaux,etc.

Images and treatment of pain in medical texts

Associations of pain and suffering with specific diseases, such as leprosy

Pain and suffering in secular punishment

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a completed Participant Information Form (PIF) by e-mail to Linda Migl Keyser(keyserl@georgetown.edu) by *15 September 2011*.

Additional information for applicants and the PIF are available at http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html.