Something that continues to strike me about the two texts that we’ve read thus far, is the issue that the characters have with forgetfulness liked with vision. In the Psychomachia, Sobriety is regathering the troops when she says “Have you forgotten, then, the thirst in the desert, the spring that was given to split the stone and brought water leaping from its top? … Stand, I pray you. Remember who…
The extreme violence and war-like imagery of Prudentius’ Psychomachia can be quite startling—and even shocking—for many, especially for those who associate the Christian scripture on which this text is based with the loving and peaceful preaching of Jesus. However, quite a few aspects of the Psychomachia are directly reminiscent of Christian scripture—most closely, the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. Prudentius describes an epic battle between the forces of…
Medievalist A.W. Strouse rejects academic queer theory as another “tediously” normative tradition, writing instead in a vein of self-described “irresponsible homo-medievalism” that utilizes medieval text as a “technology of self-preservation”. In the introduction of My Gay Middle Ages, he writes: “First of all, the heroine of the Consolation is this great big fierce diva, whose name is Lady Philosophy. She’s a Lady, and she doesn’t stand for anybody’s crap. At…
Image: Wrath attacking Patience in Prudentius’s Psychomachia: London, British Library, Cotton Cleopatra C VIII, fol. 12r
