Abstract: »Cognitive literary study interprets intertextuality as an enactive process among author, text and reader. Intertextuality guides the reader towards authorial intention and activates deeper textual understanding. When trauma is conveyed through intertextuality, readers may experience a kind of enacted cognitive dissonance: Criseyde feels no pain as the eagle’s talons rip out her heart, and does not heed the cry of the nightingale. But readers hear Philomela’s song. Trauma flares, and is quickly mitigated, so that both the framing and mitigating of traumatic acts embed in readerly apprehension as embodied trauma. This paper uses a cognitive lens to examine how trauma is transmitted through intertextuality in Troilus and Criseyde, with sexual violence shivering at the edges of narrative, and how the readerly experience of Philomela becomes an invitation to a conversation about gendered trauma.« (Source: Online Program)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of England / England in the late Middle Ages | Literature: English literature / Geoffrey Chaucer | Sex and the law: Sexual violence