Title: Indiscriminate Bodies
Description: This dissertation examines representations of the body in the Old French fabliaux in order to elucidate these stories' philosophy (or philosophies) of language and their relationship to religious, medical, and dietetic cultures. An exploration of contemporary discourses referenced in the fabliaux - moral discourses around sex and food, medical and dietetic theories concerning food and animals, and rituals and rites surrounding the living and dying body - demonstrates how these elements shape narrative structure, characters, key objects, and d&eacute;cor. The fabliaux exhibit bodies founded by and coextensive with language, which, particularly in the form of speech, is simultaneously a function of the body. This dissertation shows the fabliaux to be profoundly anchored in the material world, but also aware that the physical and material are affected by language, and subject to transformation by the greater context of twelfth-, thirteenth-, and early fourteenth-century literature in its vernacular and Latin, secular and religious forms.