Containing the Blemmye: Anxiety Towards Congenital Difference in the Old English Wonders of the East
Date of Award
Summer 2020
Degree Type
Masters Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
School
Humanities
Committee Chair
Leah Pope Parker
Committee Chair School
Humanities
Committee Member 2
Alexandra Valint
Committee Member 2 School
Humanities
Committee Member 3
Christopher Foley
Committee Member 3 School
Humanities
Abstract
This thesis aims to illuminate early medieval anxieties about sex, procreation, and congenital physical difference by applying a lens of critical disability theory to the Old English Wonders of the East, primarily as it survives in the eleventh-century manuscript, London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.v. This thesis focuses on the textual and illustrative representation of one Wonder, the Blemmye—an approximately eight-foot-tall, eight-foot-wide androgynous humanoid, whose eyes and mouth are in their chest and who does not possess a head—as a historic embodiment of what disability meant in relation to the early medieval English worldview. This thesis considers the Blemmye with respect to cultural theories of disability, as well as ideas of monstrosity, abjection, and the visual gaze, to expose certain cultural attitudes, particularly that of the early medieval English, towards disability.
This thesis demonstrates that when viewing medieval texts such as Wonders of the East through a lens for disability, the desire to classify and master extraordinary bodies exposes itself as part of the early medieval English consciousness. Their illustrative construction of the Blemmye body obscures the presence of genitalia, despite the text presenting the Blemmye as a sexually procreative being. While the text raises ideas of procreation, the illustrations suggest an unwillingness on behalf of the early medieval English to recognize the sexual and procreative capacities of the Blemmyes. Consequently, this project sheds light on the anxieties toward congenital physical difference evident in the textual and illustrative treatment of the Blemmye in Wonders of the East.
ORCID ID
0000-0002-6443-1649
Copyright
Jessica Carrell, 2020
Recommended Citation
Carrell, Jessica L., "Containing the Blemmye: Anxiety Towards Congenital Difference in the Old English Wonders of the East" (2020). Master's Theses. 764.
https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/764