"Strategies and structures of mediation: The go-between from Roman comedy to ""Celestina"""

This study presents a survey and analysis of strategies of mediation in several works of medieval literature. My analysis focuses on the paradigm of mediation exemplified by the figure of the go-between. The study proposes to examine how the mediation of erotic and cultural codes receives concrete expression in the literature of the Middle Ages by means of the figure of the intermediary or go-between. Literature provides a medium with which to explore the issues of licit and illicit union and the ways in which culture represents these mechanisms. The go-between or intermediary in his or her most essential formulation provides intervention and mediation between parties. His or her activities mobilize a process which harmonizes differences and imposes order on a situation that appears chaotic. Our specific interest lies in mediation of sexual desires by means of an agent of intercession, the go-between who intervenes in situations where sexual access is desired, but not readily permitted, to lovers. As such, the intermediary effects a transfer of the erotic into the realm of the cultural, the sexual into the arena of human activity. This shifting is crucial because it resolves the tensions between the erotic and the cultural by adapting the codes that allow or prohibit sexual access.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Comparative and World Literature

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Rivera, Isidro de Jesus

Contributors dc:contributor

• Marchand, James W.

• Literature, Comparative
• Literature, Medieval
• Literature, Romance

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1989 Rivera, Isidro de Jesus

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI8924929
(UMI)AAI8924929

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/22278