Bettina Bildhauer
Biographic Data
| ID | 3833114 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bettina Bildhauer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bettina |
| FAMILY NAME | Bildhauer |
| SIGNATURE | BILDHAUER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of St Andrews |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1055-9441 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Trans* gender and the translingual transmission of the story matter The Seven Sages of Rome / Book of Sindbad
This article discusses The Book of Sindbad and The Seven Sages of Rome as a single story matter, pan-continentally adapted in multiple languages, with the centre of transmission moving from the Middle East to Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In this view inspired by Abu-Lughod’s concept of a “world system,” the consistency of the motif of gender change across most versions becomes apparent, which may have formed part of the stor…
Translingual premodern literature in the digital age
This introduction lays out the rationale for this special collection: rethinking premodern literary studies on the basis of recent digital opportunities, translingual theories and collaborative methods. It also gives a brief overview over the complex transmission of The Seven Sages of Rome/Book of Sindbad story matter
Good trans kids and bad trans lovers as expressions of trans misogyny in the Seven Sages/Sindbad story matter and the Roman de Silence
This article takes the theoretical framework of trans misogyny to two versions of the Seven Sages/Sindbad story matter – the Hebrew Mishle Sendebar and the Latin Historia septem sapientum– as well as to the French Seven Sages continuation Marques de Rome and to the Roman de Silence. These texts, which were all produced in the North-East of French-speaking lands between c. 1175 and 1350, contain two strikingly consistent character types: the trans…
Introduction
In January 2021, Scotland became the first country in the world to make universal access to free period products a legal right, an initiative which attracted extraordinary international attention. This introduction outlines what is indeed new and ground-breaking about this law from the perspective of the history of menstruation, and what merely continues traditional and widespread conceptions, policies and practices surrounding menstruation. On t…
Briefing Paper
This briefing paper discusses how to include historical perspectives to assess the potential success for current and future menstruation legislation. The case of Scotland provides an instructive example of law-making about free period products and period poverty. While commercial products are perceived as a solution, historical research suggests that cultural attitudes, lingering stigma, and regional differences affect opportunities for passing l…
Uniting the Nation through Transcending Menstrual Blood
This article situates the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 in the context of historical imaginations both of menstruation and of the nation. It shows that despite the law- makers’ stated intentions, traditional menstrual stigma still underlies the Act and its parliamentary debates. This allows politicians speaking about menstruation to distance themselves from those who menstruate, claiming a position as part of a privileged, …
Textiles, Gender, and Materiality
This response outlines the predominant current conceptions of gendered materiality in contemporary theory (such as Karen Barad’s development of Judith Butler’s thought) and in medieval studies (such as work by Caroline Walker Bynum). It identifies and expands upon four themes from the two articles in the section that are pertinent to the descriptions of textiles and other material objects in a wider range of medieval texts and current medievalist…
Leidendes Leder und klagende Münze
This article examines two short narratives by Hans Sachs, ‘Of the Lost Talking Gulden’ (1553) and ‘The Poor Complaining Horse Hide’ (1557), as early ‘it-narratives’ that feature material things as their narrators, focalisers and protagonists: a gulden coin, and a horse hide that is then made into a shoe respectively. The small size of these things and their interaction with humans here works not to make them accessible for human handling, but all…
Silencing a Woman’s Accusation of Attempted Rape in Johannes de Alta Silva’s Dolopathos
The story cycle The Seven Sages of Rome is known for showing how different characters tell and interpret the short stories embedded in its frame narrative according to their own interests and biases. The frame narrative has so far been excluded from this reading, with all trust placed in the omniscient heterodiegetic narrator at the expense of the female protagonist. This essay opens new research perspectives by suggesting that the heterodiegetic…
Melusine's Footprint
The mythological figure Melusine will be of great interest to readers of Preternature, combining as she does what by modern standards would be natural and supernatural elements in several respects. Claimed as the historical founder and foremother of the house of Lusignan, Melusine is also the daughter of a fairy mother and a human father. Medieval fiction tells of her turning into a serpent from the navel down every Saturday. When the taboo again…
Materialität
Entgegen der Vorstellung einer im Wesentlichen sprachlich-symbolischen Verfasstheit von Kultur und Gesellschaft vermittelt dieser Band Einblicke in die materielle Beschaffenheit und Bedingtheit menschlichen Handelns und menschlicher Existenz. Hierfür behandeln die Autoren die Rolle und Bedeutung von Artefakten und Materialien, von Zeichen und Texten, von Licht, Tönen und Natur. Das Ergebnis ist eine Rehabilitierung des Materiellen in den Sozial- …
Medieval E uropean conceptions of blood
Blood had extraordinary prominence in medieval Europe across medical, religious, legal, courtly, and fictional discourses: for example, in humoral theory, in the E ucharist, in C hrist's Passion, and in warfare. This paper provides an overview of the main characteristics ascribed to blood: it worked as an authenticity effect; as part of a body‐soul unit; and by defining the outlines of the person. Christ's blood was regarded as exceptional, and f…
The co-presence of the dead
Blood in Medieval Cultures
Blood was central to medieval medicine, literature, theology and devotion. This article traces some of the characteristic features of blood in medieval texts in these areas, primarily in German from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries: the invocation of blood as proof; the prohibitions against bloodshed; the misogynist and anti‐Semitic concepts of blood; and the importance of blood in social bodies
Medieval E uropean conceptions of blood
Blood had extraordinary prominence in medieval Europe across medical, religious, legal, courtly, and fictional discourses: for example, in humoral theory, in the E ucharist, in C hrist's Passion, and in warfare. This paper provides an overview of the main characteristics ascribed to blood: it worked as an authenticity effect; as part of a body‐soul unit; and by defining the outlines of the person. Christ's blood was regarded as exceptional, and f…
Blood in Medieval Cultures
Blood was central to medieval medicine, literature, theology and devotion. This article traces some of the characteristic features of blood in medieval texts in these areas, primarily in German from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries: the invocation of blood as proof; the prohibitions against bloodshed; the misogynist and anti‐Semitic concepts of blood; and the importance of blood in social bodies
Blood in Medieval Cultures
Blood was central to medieval medicine, literature, theology and devotion. This article traces some of the characteristic features of blood in medieval texts in these areas, primarily in German from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries: the invocation of blood as proof; the prohibitions against bloodshed; the misogynist and anti‐Semitic concepts of blood; and the importance of blood in social bodies
The co-presence of the dead
Medieval E uropean conceptions of blood
Blood had extraordinary prominence in medieval Europe across medical, religious, legal, courtly, and fictional discourses: for example, in humoral theory, in the E ucharist, in C hrist's Passion, and in warfare. This paper provides an overview of the main characteristics ascribed to blood: it worked as an authenticity effect; as part of a body‐soul unit; and by defining the outlines of the person. Christ's blood was regarded as exceptional, and f…
Materialität
Entgegen der Vorstellung einer im Wesentlichen sprachlich-symbolischen Verfasstheit von Kultur und Gesellschaft vermittelt dieser Band Einblicke in die materielle Beschaffenheit und Bedingtheit menschlichen Handelns und menschlicher Existenz. Hierfür behandeln die Autoren die Rolle und Bedeutung von Artefakten und Materialien, von Zeichen und Texten, von Licht, Tönen und Natur. Das Ergebnis ist eine Rehabilitierung des Materiellen in den Sozial- …
Textiles, Gender, and Materiality
This response outlines the predominant current conceptions of gendered materiality in contemporary theory (such as Karen Barad’s development of Judith Butler’s thought) and in medieval studies (such as work by Caroline Walker Bynum). It identifies and expands upon four themes from the two articles in the section that are pertinent to the descriptions of textiles and other material objects in a wider range of medieval texts and current medievalist…
Leidendes Leder und klagende Münze
This article examines two short narratives by Hans Sachs, ‘Of the Lost Talking Gulden’ (1553) and ‘The Poor Complaining Horse Hide’ (1557), as early ‘it-narratives’ that feature material things as their narrators, focalisers and protagonists: a gulden coin, and a horse hide that is then made into a shoe respectively. The small size of these things and their interaction with humans here works not to make them accessible for human handling, but all…
Silencing a Woman’s Accusation of Attempted Rape in Johannes de Alta Silva’s Dolopathos
The story cycle The Seven Sages of Rome is known for showing how different characters tell and interpret the short stories embedded in its frame narrative according to their own interests and biases. The frame narrative has so far been excluded from this reading, with all trust placed in the omniscient heterodiegetic narrator at the expense of the female protagonist. This essay opens new research perspectives by suggesting that the heterodiegetic…
Melusine's Footprint
The mythological figure Melusine will be of great interest to readers of Preternature, combining as she does what by modern standards would be natural and supernatural elements in several respects. Claimed as the historical founder and foremother of the house of Lusignan, Melusine is also the daughter of a fairy mother and a human father. Medieval fiction tells of her turning into a serpent from the navel down every Saturday. When the taboo again…
Uniting the Nation through Transcending Menstrual Blood
This article situates the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 in the context of historical imaginations both of menstruation and of the nation. It shows that despite the law- makers’ stated intentions, traditional menstrual stigma still underlies the Act and its parliamentary debates. This allows politicians speaking about menstruation to distance themselves from those who menstruate, claiming a position as part of a privileged, …
Introduction
In January 2021, Scotland became the first country in the world to make universal access to free period products a legal right, an initiative which attracted extraordinary international attention. This introduction outlines what is indeed new and ground-breaking about this law from the perspective of the history of menstruation, and what merely continues traditional and widespread conceptions, policies and practices surrounding menstruation. On t…
Briefing Paper
This briefing paper discusses how to include historical perspectives to assess the potential success for current and future menstruation legislation. The case of Scotland provides an instructive example of law-making about free period products and period poverty. While commercial products are perceived as a solution, historical research suggests that cultural attitudes, lingering stigma, and regional differences affect opportunities for passing l…
Good trans kids and bad trans lovers as expressions of trans misogyny in the Seven Sages/Sindbad story matter and the Roman de Silence
This article takes the theoretical framework of trans misogyny to two versions of the Seven Sages/Sindbad story matter – the Hebrew Mishle Sendebar and the Latin Historia septem sapientum– as well as to the French Seven Sages continuation Marques de Rome and to the Roman de Silence. These texts, which were all produced in the North-East of French-speaking lands between c. 1175 and 1350, contain two strikingly consistent character types: the trans…
Trans* gender and the translingual transmission of the story matter The Seven Sages of Rome / Book of Sindbad
This article discusses The Book of Sindbad and The Seven Sages of Rome as a single story matter, pan-continentally adapted in multiple languages, with the centre of transmission moving from the Middle East to Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In this view inspired by Abu-Lughod’s concept of a “world system,” the consistency of the motif of gender change across most versions becomes apparent, which may have formed part of the stor…
Translingual premodern literature in the digital age
This introduction lays out the rationale for this special collection: rethinking premodern literary studies on the basis of recent digital opportunities, translingual theories and collaborative methods. It also gives a brief overview over the complex transmission of The Seven Sages of Rome/Book of Sindbad story matter
Art (9 works) · History (6 works) · Literature (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies (5 works) · Medicine (5 works) · Medieval Literature and History (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Political science (4 works)