Friday, March 4, 2016 - 4:00pm
18th Avenue Library, room 070/090
Please join us for the open forum at 2:30 (Hagerty 455) and the lecture at 4 PM
Abstract: Mélusine, a fourteenth-century snake-tailed woman who can fly, derives in part from medieval narrative traditions of fairies and mermaids. It is her excessive wealth, however, that strikes “wonder” and fear into onlookers at the court in Poitou. How might we draw on items of material culture used to characterize Mélusine’s lavish wedding celebration to help understand this ornately clad and bejeweled courtly woman in a more global context?