The (Absent) Pregnant Body in Late Medieval Romance

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the absence of pregnancy and its related maternal artifacts from late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English romance literature. Within the last decade, notable medieval scholars have promoted the utilization of critical race studies (CRT) and feminist critiques of the entrenched white- and Euro-centric approach to medieval studies. As a contribution to this ongoing work, this dissertation recovers the missing pregnant bodies in late Middle English romances by examining the national, and often racial, anxieties that surround conception, gestation, and childbirth. I argue that although existing systems of power attempt to erase descriptions of pregnancy from these texts as a means of bodily governance, unintentional moments of maternity disrupt the narrative. This research expands the important work being done by medieval CRT scholars to include the experiences of pregnant bodies, both medieval and modern.