Woman and the Medieval Imaginary of the female Maleficence

Abstract

The present study is based on the fact that there is a solid imaginary about the female maleficent underpinning the entire medieval culture of the West, whose roots are rooted in Classical Antiquity and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Based on this verification, the study investigates certain formations and figures of the medieval cultural imaginary regarding the attribute of maleficence to women and their unhealthy and perverse nature both in their biblical creation and in their generation proposed by Ancient Science. Not intending to specifically investigate the political and ideological aspects of this construction that denigrates women, the objective of this study is to present a descriptive repository of fundamental aspects of the negative naturalization of the female figure cultivated in the imagination of the Middle Ages, finally constituting an exciting study of the culture of ideas about the configurations of this misogynist attribute in one of its fiercest historical expressions – the Medieval Period. Starting from pronouncements rescued from the auctoritas tradition, the study makes critical anatomy of the feminine based on comparing images and suggestions consonant to androcentric rhetoric of the imaginary of the badly conforming of her figure and reality. Finally, it reaches the expected result in the critical perspective that verifies that the way and being of the feminine have been a constant cultural construction compromised in its proposed values, for which the horizon of medieval ideas and imaginary contributed a lot. In this way, and bearing the burden of defamation, bizarre creatures such as mermaids, basilisks, serpent-women, and even demonized ones, such as witches, are the figures, between picturesque and ideological, of this imaginary of evil about the feminine in the Middle Ages.