Entre genre et espèces : héroïnes végétales, intersections médiévales
The question of the relationship between humans and animals has been the subject of several studies in the humanities, which show its correlation with logics of domination and hierarchization. What about plants? What links, analogies, and continuities have been formulated between plants and humans?...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Société de Langues et de Littératures Médiévales d'Oc et d'Oil
2024-12-01
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| Series: | Perspectives Médiévales |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/peme/62032 |
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| Summary: | The question of the relationship between humans and animals has been the subject of several studies in the humanities, which show its correlation with logics of domination and hierarchization. What about plants? What links, analogies, and continuities have been formulated between plants and humans? Recent studies have emphasized that the Middle Ages was a pivotal period for the development of a thought of the living in the West. This article posits that this long period of incubation was not limited to putting into words a discourse whose sole object was the plant. It is always in reality a question of thinking about living beings in a relational way, in relation to the human. However, from the central Middle Ages to the end of the period, a shift takes place which moves from rather vitalist conceptions where the plant is thought of in a form of continuity with a humanity little or not apprehended in terms of gender, to conceptions which, by small insistent touches, establish correlations between feminine and plant, in particular with regard to physiology. In various corpora, but influenced in particular by encyclopedic texts, an intersection between gender and species emerges, at the same time as in the lexical field, under the influence of Aristotelian thought, the semantics of “veget*” will be associated with passivity. This exploratory article proposes an exploration of various corpora to refine and document this change, within the framework of ongoing research. |
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| ISSN: | 2262-5534 |