Through a Medieval Looking Glass:  Reading Eustache Deschamps' Miroir de mariage

Eustache Deschamps' Miroir de mariage has vexed scholars for many years -- in part because editions are few and translations, non-existent.  Although the poet has drawn increasing interest from the scholarly community as Deschamps students have expanded in the last 30 years, the Miroir remains relatively unexplored.  Is it a serious debate poem?  Is it an encyclopedic compendium? What explains the poet's widely divergent content?:  densely mystical metaphorical visions of the rewards of Christian behavior; searing portraits of the manners of the bourgeois; reworkings of stock pieces from the Widow of Ephesus to Secundus the Silent; catalogs of fish and fowl; accurate [?] depictions of the odd behaviors of men and women of many classes.  This session solicits essays to examine ways to read all or sections of the Miroir.

Please send proposals with a one-page abstract and Participant Information Form (www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html) to me at dsinnrei@stevens.edu by September 1, 2016.