brian longreally interesting review of Trish Skinner's new book on Living with Disfigurement in early medieval Europe, with consideration of material from Ireland to Byzantium, and going into the 12th c.
"Rather than embarrassment, horror, pity or disgust – the constellation of emotions most often evoked in modern accounts of facial disfigurement – the word that recurs through early medieval sources is ridicule (p. 214). As Skinner elaborates, ‘In a medieval culture that valued honor and face, being laughed at, or being the object of not-so-amusing comments, was just as much an injury as physical damage’ (p. 214)."
for me, this dovetails interestingly (though grimly!) with the way that the disfigurement of (for example) adulterous women in fabliaux, Boccaccio, etc. is meant to play as uproariously funny
"Images of faces abound in medieval art, and Skinner doesn’t overlook iconography as a potential source of evidence, but what we don’t have are detailed, naturalistic portraits of specific individuals from this period. An absence of actual faces – let alone disfigured ones – reflects the widespread conviction that appearances and essences were different and irreconcilable things."
this generalization seems a little broad to me, though I certainly can't think of any good counterexx
(review by Dr Suzannah Biernoff)