Le sexe féminin et le regard de l’Autre dans la « Visio prima » du Catoptrum microcosmicum de Remmelin : « entre la Méduse et l’abîme »

Nancy M. Frelick

doi:10.18778/1505-9065.21.10

Authors

Nancy M. Frelick Université de la Colombie-Britannique, Vancouver https://orcid.org/0009-0000-2181-2559

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1505-9065.21.10

Keywords:

Johann Remmelin, Catoptrum microcosmicum (mirror of the microcosm), flap anatomy books, iconography, mythology, psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan)

Abstract

In the introduction to their collective volume, The Body in Parts, David Hillman and Carla Mazzio use a psychoanalytic approach to examine the image of a supposed Medusa placed (overlayed) on top of an anatomical engraving of the female sex in the “Visio prima” of Johann Remmelin’s Catoptrum microcosmicum. These critics are not only interested in studying what they call the “age of synecdoche” or the “body in bits and pieces”; they also wish to examine the powers projected onto women’s sexual organs, along with the anxieties they produce, in Remmelin’s famous multi-layered flap-anatomy book. However, as we shall see, reading this enigmatic image proves far from simple or unequivocal, not only because it is part of a complex network of signs, but also because of the wide-ranging approaches to and divergent interpretations of this hybrid, mobile work. This article examines various readings of the monstrous figure that serves both to cover and to uncover what lies beneath the paper tab on which it is featured, namely the genitals of the truncated body of the pregnant woman at the bottom of the first page of the anatomical triptych. Through our exploration of the work of various scholars who have studied the image and its accompanying inscriptions, as well as the book’s context, we shall see that the picture in question does not necessarily represent a Gorgon, and that, despite the significant contributions of specialists from different disciplines, this mysterious figure still seems far from revealing all of its secrets.

Author Biography

Nancy M. Frelick, Université de la Colombie-Britannique, Vancouver

Nancy M. Frelick est professeure à l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique (Vancouver), où elle travaille surtout sur la littérature de la Renaissance. Parmi ses publications, on compte notamment Délie as Other : Toward a Poetics of Desire in Scève’s ‘Délie’ (French Forum, 1994) et des articles sur les œuvres de divers auteurs et autrices. Elle a récemment édité ou co-édité plusieurs volumes collectifs : The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture : Specular Reflections (Brepols, 2016) ; Marguerite de Navarre : perspectives croisées, avec Dariusz Krawczyk et Scott Francis (numéro spécial de la revue French Forum, 2022) ; Subject/Object and Beyond : Women in Early Modern France, avec Edith Benkov (Iter Press, 2024). En ce moment, elle se focalise sur deux grands projets : un livre sur la symbolique du miroir dans les textes du seizième siècle ; et une monographie sur la réception des autrices de la Renaissance française. Son site universitaire : https://english.ubc.ca/profile/nancy-frelick/

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