Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture

Isabel Davis; Birkbeck College, University of London, UK Lara Farina; West Virginia University, USA Virgina Langum; Umeå University, Sweden Robert Mills; University College London, UK Julie Orlemanski; Boston College, USA Elizabeth Robertson; University of Glasgow, UK Susan Small; King's University College at the University of Western Ontario, Canada Karl Steel; Brooklyn College of CUNY, USA

"Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture is a theoretically-informed and thought-provoking collection, and, while its close readings focus primarily on Middle English literature, it has a much broader applicability. ... On the whole, this is a fascinating collection of essays that is sure to provoke further consideration of the importance of skin - its meaning and materiality - in the Middle Ages and beyond." (Jessica Barr, Mediaevistik, Vol. 28, 2015) 'Taking as its subject matter what Katie Walter aptly calls 'the dense tissue of associations of skin in medieval culture,' the essays in this excellent volume explore the porousness of body to world, human vulnerability, the jarring effects of touching and being touched, our intimacy with animals and monsters, race and corporeal form, medical and religious discourses of the dermal, and the enfolding of identity and temporality via the corporeal membrane. Well written and cogently argued, Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture offers eight essays and a response piece through which the cultural meanings and blunt material challenges of skin undermine the duality of surface and depth.' - Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Professor of English and Director, GW Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute, George Washington University, USA

• Introduction; Katie L. Walter 1. Wondrous Skins and Tactile Affection: The Blemmye's Touch; Lara Farina 2. Noli me tangere : The Enigma of Touch in Middle English Religious Literature and Art for and about Women; Elizabeth Robertson 3. Havelok's Bare Life and the Significance of Skin; Robert Mills 4. The Medieval Werewolf Model of Reading Skin; Susan Small 5. Cutaneous Time in the Late Medieval Literary Imagination; Isabel Davis 6. The Form of the Formless: Medieval Taxonomies of Skin, Flesh and the Human; Katie L. Walter 7. Discerning Skin: Complexion, Surgery and Language in Medieval Confession; Virginia Langum 8. Desire and Defacement in The Testament of Cresseid ; Julie Orlemanski 9. Touching Back: Responding to Reading Skin ; Karl Steel