Abstract
The blushing face is the clearest sign of shame in medieval literature. But what happens when a blushing human is transformed into an animal? Such a metamorphosis raises questions about the embodiment of emotional experience and expression in the human form. Gower’s expansion on the metamorphosis of Philomela from a woman to a nightingale in Book V of the Confessio Amantis explores Philomela’s reconfiguring of the experience of shame as a direct result of her transformation. Is it the feeling of shame itself, or the act of blushing, that takes ontological priority? Gower’s association of Philomela’s loss of ‘face’ or honor with the loss of her human face reveals the entanglement of her human and animal identities and emotions.
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Notes
Quotations of Confessio Amantis are taken from Gower (1901 [repr. 1969]) and cited by book and line number.
English translation by the author.
Kay also uses the term ‘hyper-legibility’ to describe the face’s role in the negotiation of identity (Kay, 2011, 28).
A Middle English word that likely means ‘nobody’ rather than ‘no male adult’ (see MED, s. v. man).
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Sarah Jane Brazil, Einat Klafter, and Katie Walter for their patient feedback on my early thoughts regarding blushing birds, and to Stephanie Trigg and Stephanie Downes for their editorial suggestions.
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Flannery, M.C. Gower’s blushing bird, Philomela’s transforming face. Postmedieval 8, 35–50 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-016-0036-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-016-0036-9