{"id":3898,"date":"2015-03-31T02:39:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T02:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/?page_id=3898"},"modified":"2015-03-31T02:39:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T02:39:57","slug":"massey-2008-congress","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/abstracts\/massey-2008-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Massey (2008 Congress)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Jeff Massey<br \/>\n(Molloy College, Rockville Center, New York)<br \/>\n&#8220;<em>Imputrible<\/em>! \u00a0On the Care and Feeding of Severed Heads&#8221;<\/h3>\n<p>Abstract of Paper Presented at the 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, 2008)<br \/>\nSession on <strong>&#8220;Bark at the Rune: \u00a0Transforming the Medieval Werewolf&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>\nSponsored by the <strong>Research Group on Manuscript Evidence<\/strong><br \/>\nOrganized by Jeff Massey<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/2008-international-congress-on-medieval-studies\/\">2008 Congress<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A magical <em>greyne<\/em> enables a decapitated Christian child to continue singing praises to God after his dismemberment at the hands of an angry Jewish mob. \u00a0A heroic Jewess decapitates a drunken and lusty Assyrian general and uses his miraculously preserved head to rally her people to rebellion. \u00a0An unfaithful ex-wife is forced repeatedly to kiss the embalmed head of her deceased lover even as her lycanthropic ex-husband kisses his new wife. \u00a0A Parisian saint continues to preach after his own beheading, carrying his haloed head under his arm as he walks to his voluntary entombment. \u00a0And finally, an over-proud knight learns humility from an otherworldly green man who shrugs off his own decapitation and laughingly threatens a similar cut in return.<\/p>\n<p>These myriad medieval moments of miraculous decollation \u2014 and they are but a few of the many extant \u2014 reveal an impressive range of reactions to postmortem severed heads, leading one to ask: \u00a0Was the undead severed head \u2014 the seat of reason and spirituality in the Middle Ages \u2014 a site of terror, awe, or reverence? \u00a0In this survey of the beheading topos in medieval fiction, I categorize and analyze the manner of extra-mortuary preservation of human heads in magical romances, cephalophoric saints\u2019 lives, fairy tales, and mythical histories, ultimately suggesting that the manner of capital preservation predicates its reception.<\/p>\n<p>In short: \u00a0I will present a modern collation of medieval decollations. \u00a0Tasteless puns and graphic illustrations surely follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeff Massey (Molloy College, Rockville Center, New York) &#8220;Imputrible! \u00a0On the Care and Feeding of Severed Heads&#8221; Abstract of Paper Presented at the 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, 2008) Session on &#8220;Bark at the Rune: \u00a0Transforming the Medieval Werewolf&#8221; Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence Organized by Jeff Massey 2008 Congress [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1023,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3899,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3898\/revisions\/3899"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}