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The Text and the Body in Middle English Seduction Lyrics

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Abstract

Middle English comic seduction lyrics illuminate the similarities between the comic process and the seduction process. Early in the process, language and abstraction are paramount, but events reveal that language is being used to cloak carnality, and the result of both the joke and the seduction is the exposure of bodily realities. The corpus of Middle English seduction lyrics, from “Joly Jankyn” to “I haue a newe garden,” illustrates the process of unveiling both meaning and body; in the inevitable comic incarnation it is always the woman who is left holding the baby.

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  1. Department of English, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, 97403, USA

    Martha Bayless

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  1. Martha Bayless
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Correspondence to Martha Bayless.

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Bayless, M. The Text and the Body in Middle English Seduction Lyrics. Neophilologus 93, 165–174 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-008-9126-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-008-9126-8

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