Noah D. Guynn
· Professor of French & Comparative Literature; Associate Dean of Faculty for Humanities, Arts, and Cultural StudiesUniversity of California, Davis · Romance Studies
Active 1994–2024
About
Noah D. Guynn is a professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis, where he also serves as Associate Dean of Faculty for Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies. His academic expertise focuses on medieval and early modern literature, theater, and culture. Guynn has authored two books: Allegory and Sexual Ethics in the High Middle Ages, published in 2007, and Pure Filth: Ethics, Politics, and Religion in Early French Farce, published in 2020. He has also coedited several scholarly works related to medieval and early modern studies. His teaching encompasses a range of courses, including undergraduate electives on gender history, graduate seminars on medieval and early modern comedy, gender, humor, and the marriage plot, emphasizing critical, feminist, and queer theories. Guynn's research interests include performance studies, theater history, and the intersection of gender, ethics, and culture in medieval and early modern contexts. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and a B.A. from Haverford College, and has received awards such as the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and the Phi Beta Kappa Excellence in Teaching Award.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Philosophy
- Archaeology
- Aesthetics
- Epistemology
- Art
- History
- Psychology
Selected publications
Hybridity, Ethics, and Gender in Two Old French Werewolf Tales
University of Notre Dame Press eBooks · 2024-07-15 · 3 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingReflections on Editing Exemplaria, Part II: An Interview
New Chaucer Studies Pedagogy and Profession · 2022-03-14
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingIn an interview with Katie Little, Noah Guynn and Elizabeth Scala reflect on editing Exemplaria during the years 2008–2018.
University of Pennsylvania Press eBooks · 2020-01-21
paratext1st authorCorrespondingRomanic Review · 2020 · 1 citations
Senior authorCorresponding- History
- Art
- Archaeology
Not so long ago, the project that would have seen modernization spread over the whole planet came up against unexpected opposition from the planet itself. Should we give up, deny the problem, or grit our teeth and hope for a miracle? Alternatively we could inquire into what this modern project
University of Pennsylvania Press eBooks · 2020-01-21
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingUniversity of Pennsylvania Press eBooks · 2020-01-21
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingFrench Studies · 2020-01-29
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingIt is a signal achievement of Andreea Marculescu’s new book to bring medieval depictions of demonic possession into dialogue both with theological and medical discourses of the period and with modern affect studies, disability studies, and phenomenology. The author’s aim is to show that medieval demoniacs (who were often but not exclusively female) were taken not only as pathological objects of interrogation and exorcism, diagnosis and treatment but also as ‘insurgent’ subjects (p. 7) whose physical symptoms and ‘disarticulated language’ could be used to mark out ‘zones of visual, aural, and tactile contact’ in which innovative forms of ‘intercorporeality’, ‘sensuous exchange’, and ethical intersubjectivity could arise (p. 6). Marculescu locates this alternative model of the demoniac in theatre, specifically mystery plays that were written and staged in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century France and that featured possession scenes drawn from scripture or hagiography. By her account, those scenes merge scholastic and clinical models of demonic possession with the live, embodied forms of representation that characterize theatrical spectacle, that call for ‘somatic modes of attention’ (p. 19), and that enable a heightened degree of affective immediacy. Mystery plays create ‘an ambiguous milieu, a gray zone in which [the demoniac’s] subjectivity is not exclusively produced and imposed by a theological or medical gaze’ (p. 9), and in which onlookers are called upon to experience ‘empathy and sensorial participation’ (p. 17). The book’s first chapter outlines physiological and pastoral treatments of possession, with a particular emphasis on efforts by male intellectuals to regulate women’s bodies and devotional practices. The remaining three chapters turn to theatre in order to show, in Chapter 2, that mystery plays work to de-pathologize possession and to enable demoniacs to narrate their own corporeal and affective experience; in Chapter 3, that audiences are invited to experience both horror at and empathy with the suffering of possessed characters; and, in Chapter 4, that the vulnerable bodies of the possessed can be used to imagine a therapeutic ethic of care with broad social implications. Marculescu’s study moves dextrously across historical, cultural, and intellectual divides and draws especially illuminating analogies between medieval demoniacs and modern hysterics, enabling her to argue, along with Louis Aragon and André Breton, that possession (like hysteria) is not a pathology but ‘a supreme means of expression’ and a ‘type of corporeality predicated upon vulnerability’ (pp. 127 and 128). This shuttling between medieval and modern can sometimes be jarring, and the author’s critical vocabulary, as rich and varied as it is, occasionally obscures her argument or dulls its impact. Additionally, I would have appreciated greater clarity in discussions of gender and possession, as Marculescu typically insists that the demoniac is a ‘she’ even though several of her examples are male, as indeed were many of Charcot’s patients at the Salpêtrière. That said, this is a valuable study that significantly expands our understanding of medieval demonology and religious theatre by turning from intellectual and elite discourses and practices to embodied, affective, and demotic ones.
Chapter 4. Making History: Misbehaved Women, Well-Behaved Women, and the Sexual Politics of Farce
University of Pennsylvania Press eBooks · 2020-01-21
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingUniversity of Pennsylvania Press eBooks · 2020-01-21
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingChapter 1. The Wisdom of Farts: Ethics and Politics, Farce and Festive Comedy
University of Pennsylvania Press eBooks · 2020-01-21
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 16 shared
Andrew Cowell
- 16 shared
Rosalind Brown
ECW Press (Canada)
- 16 shared
Deborah McGrady
- 16 shared
Guillaume De
Hernia Center
- 16 shared
Simon Gaunt
- 16 shared
Matthew Fisher
Hernia Center
- 9 shared
Mike Winters
University of California, Riverside
- 9 shared
Chris Ber- Tram
University of California, Riverside
Awards & honors
- American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 2012–13
- Phi Beta Kappa Excellence in Teaching Award, 2009
- Martin Stevens Award for the Best New Article in Early Drama…
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