ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Figuring “Sleeping Beauty”: Metamorphosis of a Lit- erary and Cultural Trope in European Fairy Tales and Medicine, c. 1350-1700 https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40205/ Version: Full Version Citation: Sarnyai„ Lili (2016) Figuring “Sleeping Beauty”: Metamor- phosis of a Literary and Cultural Trope in European Fairy Tales and Medicine, c. 1350-1700. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email Lili Sarnyai Figuring “Sleeping Beauty”: Metamorphosis of a Literary and Cultural Trope in European Fairy Tales and Medicine, c. 1350-1700 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Birkbeck, University of London 1 This is to certify that all the work presented in this thesis is my own. 2 Abstract This thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach to a recurrent cultural trope: the figure of the sleeping beauty. Sleeping beauties are young women—paradigms of femininity, paragons of virtue and physical perfection—who lose consciousness and become comatose and catatonic, for prolonged periods. In this unnatural state, these female bodies remain intact: materially incorrupt, aesthetically unblemished. Thus can the body of the sleeping beauty be defined as an enigma and a paradox: a nexus of competing and unanswered questions, uniquely worthy of investigation. This thesis examines the metamorphoses of the figure of the sleeping beauty in literature and medicine between c.1350 and 1700 in order to interrogate the enduring aesthetic and epistemological fascination that she exercises in different contexts: her potency to entrance, her capacity to charm, in both literary and philosophical realms. The widespread presence of the sleeping beauty in literature and art, as well as in the broader social sphere, over the centuries, indicates the figure’s important and ongoing cultural role. Central to this role is the figure’s dual nature and functionality. On the one hand, conceptualized as allegories, sleeping beauties act as receptacles for a complex matrix of patriarchal fears, desires and beliefs about the female body in general, and the virgin and maternal bodies in particular. On the other hand, understood as material or bodily entities, sleeping beauties make these same ideological questions incarnate. Sleeping beauties are, therefore, signs, treated as material bodies, a tension which this thesis explores. As such, they are prime subjects for cross-disciplinary correlational study and historicist analysis: vehicles for comparison and dialogue between literature, medicine, and religion on the issues of power and passivity, sexuality and gender difference, mortality and beauty, nature and the unnatural or supernatural. Sleeping beauties negotiate the boundaries of human desire for, and capacity for belief in, miracles and wonders. 3 Félinek, sok szeretettel 4 Mortal eternal in mortality, Rose, Names Dornröschen, Princess Of the Briar Rose […] You are the dreamer who dreams the world, and yet, Princess, the world dreams you. There is never A beginning. You create and are created, Legend forever […] Hajden Carruth, The Sleeping Beauty (1990) 5 Table of Contents Title Page ........................................................................................................................... 1 Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 3 Dedication .......................................................................................................................... 4 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ 6 List of Figures .................................................................................................................... 8 Note on Texts and Conventions ....................................................................................... 11 Introduction: Configuring Sleeping Beauty ...................................................................... 13 i. Seeking Sleeping Beauty: Project aims and scope ..................................................... 13 ii. Dissecting Sleeping Beauty: Analytical methodology .............................................. 18 iii. Reading Sleeping Beauty: Research approach and methodology ............................ 21 Strict analysis: Structuralist approaches to folk and fairy tales ................................ 22 Finding fairy tales: Development and definition of a genre ...................................... 23 Towards a definition of the body: Incarnations and corporeal variations ................ 32 Materiality: Bodies and boundaries ........................................................................... 39 Sleeping Beauty on the couch: The hysterical foundations of psychoanalysis ............................................................ 43 iv. Beautiful paradoxes: Coda to the Introduction ......................................................... 47 Chapter I: Medieval Sleeping Beauties: Wandering wombs and marvellous maidens: “L’histoire de Troylus et de la belle Zellandine” ............................................................................................................... 48 i. Summary of “L’histoire de Troylus et de la belle Zellandine” .................................. 49 ii. Introduction, Methodology, Nodal Points ................................................................. 52 iii. Peering into Perceforest ........................................................................................... 60 iv. Framing femininity in medieval society and romance ............................................. 64 v. Call the doctor, call the midwife! A critical commentary on religion, medicine and romance in “L’histoire de Troylus et de la belle Zellandine” ................. 67 vi. Conclusion: Mortal marvels ................................................................................... 104 Chapter II: Early Modern Sleeping Beauties: Giambattista Basile’s “Sole, Luna e Talia” and the incorruption of the flesh ................ 106 i. Summary of “Sole, Luna e Talia” ............................................................................ 107 ii. Introduction, Methodology, Nodal Points ............................................................... 109 iii. Back to Basile: The ribald cunti of a Baroque stylist ............................................. 114 iv. Some things better left unseen: The secrets of the female body in early modern medicine ................................................................................................ 123 v. Between enchantment and death: A critical commentary on “Sole, Luna e Talia” .................................................................................................... 130 vi. Conclusion: The rape of Talia? .............................................................................. 160 6 Chapter III: French Sleeping Beauties: Cosmetics, hygiene and les maladies des femmes: Charles Perrault’s “La belle au bois dormant” ............................................................................................. 163 i. Summary of “La belle au bois dormant” .................................................................. 164 ii. Introduction, Methodology, Nodal Points ............................................................... 167 iii. Fashioning fairy tales: The Parisian historical and literary context ....................... 177 iv. The (in)fertile female body in late-seventeenth century medicine ......................... 188 v. Pricking Sleeping Beauty: A critical commentary on “La belle au bois dormant” .......................................................................................... 201 vi. Conclusion: From waiting to waking ..................................................................... 222 Conclusion: Sleeping Beauty, an enigma re-enfleshed……………………….………...226 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 234 7 List of Figures Figure 1.1. Title page of Prologue. Le première livre de roy de percheforest. MS Français 345. Bibliothèque nationale de France.............................................................................. 48 Figure 1.2. Title page of fifth volume. Hystoire du roy Perceforest. Paris: Nicolas Couteau for Galliot du Pré, 1528. Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library Dept. of Printed Books. ..................................................................................................... 60 Figure 1.3. Double-page spread with marginalia and heavy annotations from the Trotula: De passionibus mulierum. MS Latin 1622. Bibliothèque nationale de France ...................................................................................... 76 Figure 1.4. Attempts to revive swooning female patient. MS Ashmole 399, fol. 033r. 13th Century. Bodleian Library, Oxford. .......................................................... 78 Figure 2.1. Frontispece from Giambattista Basile. Lo cunto deli cunte, overo, Lo trattenemiento de' peccerille. Iornata primma. Napoli: G.A. Abbattutis, 1636. ...................................................................................................