Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Romanica
Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Romanica is a pluridisciplinary publication especially devoted to studies dealing with the Romanic literatures from the Middle ages to the present day as well as to studies of the reception of Antiquity in modern times. The preferred language of publication is French, though other romance languages and Polish have also been used. The revue publishes contributions from Polish and foreign scholars. As regards literary studies, methodologies are varied and topics covered may relate to literary history, genres, literary currents, as well as epistemological issues that have a bearing on the history of ideas.
The “Kobelt Moment” or Organically Founded Heterosexuality
Kobelt is credited with advancing the anatomy and physiology of the organs of genital pleasure. His knowledge is based on dry natural anatomical parts and the observation of mammalian copulation. But he is also the author of the highly debatable assertion that the glans of the clitoris is stimulated by the penis during coitus. This conclusion stems not only from the scientific methods he employs, but also from the rise of the love marriage ideal.
Copyright (c) 2026 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Lessons of the Scalpel: From Femine Anatomy to Physiology in Some Anatomical Texts at the Dawn of Modern Times
Perfectly symmetrical and facing each other, the two beautiful nudes depicted in Andreas Vesalius’s Epitome (1543) can be considered an artistic introduction to the anatomical investigation of sexed bodies placed on an equal footing. The dissection shows and explains the internal layout of the human body in general, and thus any differences by virtue of gender. The body depicted and described in Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica (1543) is predominantly male, but observations scattered across the various volumes help to build the morphological identity of a female body, dissected. Descriptions of the female sexual anatomy were relatively sparse in the medical discourse of the early modern era, when scholars approached the autopsy of female bodies from a physiological perspective and covered the female sex, so briefly exposed, with a veil of propriety.
Inventing Female Anatomy in the Early Modern Period: Dissections and Interpretations of the Uterus
Considered both the enigmatic emblem of femininity and the source of all women’s ailments, the uterus has long been the object of male medical speculations, fantasies, and interpretations. In early modern Europe, dissecting the uterus became central to the production of knowledge: a means to unveil the secrets of female generative power, to assert control over women’s bodies, and to assign new specificity to their elusive nature. This article explores how 16th- and 17th-century medical and anatomical discourse, still entwined with classical and medieval legacies on women, projected broader cultural narratives onto the uterus – oscillating between wonder and pathology, metaphor and materiality, nature and morality. By analyzing visual and textual sources, it investigates how the medical male gaze shaped the womb and therefore the female body at the intersection of science, philosophy, and the gender politics of the early modern world.
A Curious Gender in Hermes and Asclepius: Some Remarks on the Historical Iconogyny of Alchemy and Anatomy
This article responds to the need for a cross-disciplinary approach to the iconography of anatomy and alchemy. In these two fields, the recurrent representations of the female body, or iconogyny, in a number of publications from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries invite us to examine the question of gender independently, as much as is possible, of written discourse. The study focuses on some thirty illustrations, more or less familiar to historians of texts and ideas, and aims at contributing to the imaginary of the pre-modern body.
Sexual Difference and the Uterus in Luis Mercado, Rodrigo de Castro, and Zacuto Lusitano
Many treatises on gynaecology of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries describe the uterus as the cause of women’s diseases, according to a perspective inherited from the Hippocratic Corpus and Aretaeus. Simultaneously, however, and in a more positive view much indebted to Galen, its position, form and functions were presented as the admirable work of a wise nature that does nothing at random. In this paper, I aim to analyse the tension resulting from the coexistence of these two perspectives in Luis Mercado’s, Rodrigo de Castro’s, and Zacuto Lusitano’s treatises on women’s diseases and how the tension between the two is articulated with these authors’ views on sexual difference. Common to the three is an evident effort to aggrandise the subject of their treatises and to present women’s medical care as a particularly challenging area of expertise in which the medical author is a key authoritative character.
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries treatises on gynaecology
And Renart Created Woman: Representations of the Female Sex in the Roman De Renart
The Roman de Renart presents female genitals in five of its stories: in the Viol d’Hersent, Comment Renart Parfit le con, Renart nigromancien, the Confession Renart, and the Monstrance des culs. The texts use two common metaphors to designate female genitals, namely the hole and the animal, but closely link them through its poetics, where bestiality and desire are central. These terms show the importance given to vision, since they allow us to grasp what seems elusive. This vision is intended, above all, to be male domination over the female body: the Roman de Renart bears witness to a most powerful male gaze. However, it is also the first literary text to evoke the clitoris, thanks to the term “landie”, defined as specific to women. In this sense, the Roman de Renart also reveals flaws in this male domination.
Naming and Representing the Female Anatomy in Early Renaissance Poetry
Using wordplay, Clément Marot expressed his difficulty in describing the female sex. Around the same period, successful attempts were made in the “blasons du con”, composed at a time when medicine brought a finer knowledge of female anatomy. The wordplay gives a glimpse of this anatomy, but transposes it into an imaginary world without breaking from the Middle Ages. Behind the pleasure of the description is a kind of eroticism of language, supported by recurring style figures. But this poetic game can be dangerous: the poet is exposed to censorship, more or less consciously, because the notion of obscenity is relative. Political issues may explain why the reception of images of the female sex oscillates between shadow and light.
Sex Words at the Heart of the Querelle des femmes in the Renaissance
Amidst the Querelle des femmes, a series of discourses pertinent to the establishment of gender emerged from the first printing presses, as evidenced by medieval texts such as Les Lamentations de Mathéolus, Les Évangiles des Quenouilles, or Le Champion des dames by Martin Le Franc, and in later 16th-century works such as Drusac’s Les Controverses des sexes Masculin et Femenin, Jehan Du Pré’s Le Palais des nobles dames, François de Billon’s Le Fort inexpugnable de l’honneur du Sexe Femenin and Jean Dagonneau’s La Guerre des Masles contre les femelles. The present study focuses on the words and images used by these misogynist and profeminist authors to refer to the sex of women, which was often confused with the women themselves. In the space between the forbidden and the pleasure of the unspeakable, they depict it as a hidden treasure, a fence threatened by opening, injury or escape, when they do not depict this sex/mouth as an unfathomable abyss and a diabolical trap.
The Female Sex and the Gaze of the Other in the “Visio prima” of the Catoptrum microcosmicum by Remmelin: “Between Medusa and the Abyss”
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.
Catoptrum microcosmicum (mirror of the microcosm)
psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan)
The Female Reproductive System in Louis de Caseneuve’s emblemata medica (1626)
In our work, we focused on the eighth of the twelve emblems of Louis de Caseneuve, (?-1645), a Jesuit from a bourgeois family in Tournon, entitled Nascentem damna uenantur (Misfortunes strike the one who is born). The first part of the emblem offers a short anatomical lesson on the female reproductive system. This course consists of a detailed examination of engraved figures, which the reader, a young doctor, must interpret by relying on both the interpretive keys gathered in the hieroglyphic figures (hieroglyphica) and the Latin commentary. This emblem thus creates an allegorical scene in which each iconographic element first invites the reader to contemplate the knowledge and then to memorize it.
Life in the Folds: Mary’s Uterus in French 17th-Century Catholic Sermons
Gothic stainglasses are sometimes described as symbols of the Virgin’s hymen: they transform sunrays’ appearance without diminishing their light. For obvious reasons of bienséance, Mary’s birthing is not represented as such in early modern sermons. However, the locus generationis of a body which is “begotten, not made” keeps being questioned well beyond the Middle Ages. Therefore, Mary’s uterus is evoked by a vast and complex metaphorical network: combining images of jail, blood, and sanctuary, preachers try to convey the idea of a figurative space, which symbolizes Incarnation, and announces Jesus’s tomb and his liberation. Flipping the images of the humiliating prison and painful narrowness, they make Mary’s uterus a paradoxical space, an hortus conclusus whose very darkness is a promise of light.
To Bloom and to Wither: Discourses and Knowledge about the ‘Hidden’ Nature of Women in Medical Writings in 16th- and 17th-Century France
During the Renaissance, representations of the human body were at the heart of social and cultural concerns. The position of Man was essential to understanding the world. Women, in particular, became a subject of study that was both fascinating and complex, even mysterious. Renaissance medicine, which relied heavily on ancient knowledge, approached the theme of the female body through the lenses of age, its functions, and its specific characteristics. This article focuses on the “hidden” nature of women at the three stages of life – youth, adulthood, and old age – as distinguished in the medical treatises of the time. The aim of this article is to analyze how Renaissance physicians conceived of and described women through the different stages of life. We will examine the attitudes of various physicians toward the female body and attempt to present their respective approaches.
16th- and 17th-Century medical discourse
Vulva as Parergon. The Reception of Vulvar Images in Italy in the 15th-Century (Gentile da Fabriano, Sandro Botticelli)
What do a Venus by Sandro Botticelli, a Madonna by Gentile da Fabriano and Helen of Troy by Zanobi Strozzi have in common? In these paintings, the vulva has been extracted from the groin of the female figure and moved to another area. In this way, the folds of a drape or the wooden knot of a lectern support a vulvar image, i.e. a visual form that, without exactly reproducing a female sex, allows its presence to be perceived. The shift in this figurative object leads from the figure – condensed, according to the theories of the Quattrocento, from the entire art of painting – to its parergon – that over-determining accessory charged with meaning and emotion (Aby Warburg). The question of the viewer’s active vision generated by these motifs will be addressed, leading us to a question: what was the visibility and significance of these vulgar images?
The Power of Plants. Sex and Coral in Early Modern Anatomical Illustration
In medieval tradition, the uterus was represented as an empty vessel meant to be filled by the phallus or the embryo. In the mid-16th century, however, Andreas Vesalius renewed scientific illustration by presenting naturalistic internal views of the female reproductive system. Yet some of the visual motifs used by engravers to give form to the ‘matrix’ were not based on direct observation. This article traces the history of botanical motifs taken from art history and reinterpreted in early modern anatomical treatises between the 16th and 18th centuries. An analysis of the plants, flowers, and corals integrated in a scientific context reveals that the underlying discourse of these images is less about the biological inferiority of the feminine compared to the masculine, and more about the shared power of life between humans and non-humans.
From Print to Wool: Vesalius and the ‘Knit your own womb’ Movement
The womb has been represented in many ways across Western European history, from miracle to sewer. This chapter begins with some of the earliest ways of showing the womb in printed materials. It then looks at what happens when different physical media are used to portray this and other body parts, focusing in particular on the impact of wool and similar materials in making the womb not only more approachable for women but also a potential political tool in claiming women’s rights.
Covering the Feminine Form in the Osler Library of the History of Medicine
To William Osler, a firm grasp of the history of medicine was integral to the formation of a good doctor. This conviction drove his decision to amass a history of medicine library for the McGill Medical Faculty. Osler’s purpose was to create a library that reflected the intellectual foundations of the medical profession, yet he also realized that the act of collecting a library was subjective. This chapter examines the biases inherent in Osler’s Library with respect to women: biases in their representation as authors and subjects, and biases present within the pages of books Osler selected. Through its holdings and internal organization, the library unconsciously reinforced dominant society’s notions of female sexuality. The Osler Library today preserves a broad range of literature available to researchers who are interested in the female body and sexuality, a development that reflects changes in the dominant social and cultural fabric.
‘Snatched Away’: Ageing Bias in Vulva Positive Social Media and Stock Photography Images of the Vulva
Although images of cis and trans women’s sexual anatomy are often taken up as acts of feminist pride, symbolizing women’s empowerment, images of older women’s genitals remain much less visible. In this study, I used visual content analysis to determine the representation of ageing bias in a vulva positive social media site and in a stock photography website. The study results confirm a lack of representation in popular visual culture, so that the discursive production of older women’s sexual anatomy remains centered on medical and social notions of menopausal deficiency. Notions of atrophy, decay, and ignored anatomy create challenges in the attainment of satisfactory images for self-identification, physical knowledge, and sexual health for women at midlife and beyond. I make recommendations about how older women’s sexual anatomy might become part of visual culture, with the potential to be developed as a site of feminist activism.
The Female Sex in Contemporary Art: A Performing Organ
The article examines a Western panorama of performances of the female sex since the end of the 1960s. The representation of the female sex in contemporary art has been a mode of expression of the feminism of artists seeking, among other things, to escape the hypersexualization of the female body. The female sex also engages the female reproductive organs in a process of reappropriation of the body: by becoming an object, or even a subject of creation, this part of the matrix body rediscovers its qualities as a living organic element, producer of fluids, made up of muscles and a possible place of pleasure. These images therefore engage what was the female sex towards another bodily representation free from the reproductive and libidinal functions instituted by the heteronormative male gaze of art history.
Thoughts on a drawing practice, accompanied by ten drawings.
The Dialectic of “Non-Correspondences” in Communication
The communication we master, sometimes unconsciously or almost unconsciously, involves, upon analysis, a whole system of complex steps aimed at overcoming several ontological and noetic thresholds. Indeed, language assembles and reconciles realities of different natures. Meaning thus seems to be the result of a dialectical clash that transforms difference (ontological non-correspondence) into relational correspondence. Following in the theoreticians’ footsteps, the article attempts to present some key aspects of the problem: incompatibility of mental content, language and reference (Ogden-Richards noetic triangle), incompatibility of signifier and signified (Lotman, Kvasz), dialectics of performance (speech) and thought (Kleist), Unbestimmtheitsstellen (Ingarden, Mukařovský), and Leerstelle (Iser). The study attempts to highlight several contradictory points of the noesis that underpins, among other things, literary creativity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Petr Kyloušek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Describing Art, Describing Nature: Correspondences in the Work of Francis Poictevin
The article examines the image of Baudelairean correspondences as they emerge in the literary oeuvre of Francis Poictevin (1854-1904), whose vision is rendered in an impressionistic and symbolic manner, marked by a keen sensitivity to detail. The study explores both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of correspondences. The first part of the article addresses the synesthetic depictions of pantheistic and mystical landscapes. The second focuses on descriptions of paintings, emphasising the transposition of art and numerous ekphraseis. The fragmentary nature of Poictevin’s écriture artiste and the uniqueness of his poetic phrasing enable him to create particularly vivid literary images. The analysis seeks to identify the techniques employed by the author to describe landscapes and paintings, to elucidate the relationship between these two types of impressions, and to examine how the use of Baudelairean correspondences influences Francis Poictevin’s stylistics.
Copyright (c) 2025 Eliza Sasin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Correspondences Between Fiction and Non-Fiction in the Work of Camille Pert
Reflections on the theory of the art of writing often accompany the work of a writer. Camille Pert can be considered a particular representative of this trend; her keen interest in social issues led her to devote several pages to women’s work and to women’s status in marriage. Our analysis will focus on the similarities and differences between Pert’s vision of women’s role in public and private spaces as expressed in one of her how-to-books Le Bonheur conjugal – and her novels Vénale, Leur égale, L’Autel and La Petite Cady series. We will also explore the significant didactic component that prevails in Pert’s oeuvre, which is marked by generic ambiguity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Weronika Lesiak https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Intertextual Play – Correspondences in Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s The Journey to the End of the Night
In The Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline opens an intertextual play being inspired by different literary traditions. The novel follows the picaresque model, similar to Rabelais’ Gargantua, with its wandering hero, Bardamu, who undergoes events without his own will. It establishes a kind of a dialogue with Voltaire’s Candide, replacing, however, its hopeful quest by a bitter deception. Céline also uses grotesque and satire to criticise our civilisation, differentiating himself from realist and pacifist novels of his time. Intertextuality is also manifested through philosophical and psychoanalytic references: Céline is inspired by Nietzsche, especially the concept of eternal return, and integrates Freudian theories, in particular the Kriegsneurosen (war neurosis), to describe the anguish of Bardamu, torn between his peaceful self and his warrior self. These correspondences enrich the novel, highlighting the fragility of human existence and the inevitability of suffering. experiences.
Copyright (c) 2025 Wojciech Trembaczowski https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Vincent Jouve and François Mauriac: Cross-examined Views on the Character
Vincent Jouve’s tripartite model of the literary character, i.e., the “lisant,” the “lectant,” and the “lu”, provides a useful framework for analysing Mauriac’s approach to characterisation. Mauriac, following in the tradition of Jouve, invites the reader to actively participate in the creation of meaning. Through his vivid portrayal of Thérèse Desqueyroux, Mauriac demonstrates how a character can be both a product of the author’s imagination and a catalyst for the reader’s own interpretive journey. By focusing on the “lisant,” Mauriac encourages readers to engage with the text on an emotional and intellectual level, shaping their own understanding of the character and her experiences.
Copyright (c) 2025 Klaudia Kaczmarek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Between Resonances and Legacies: Literary Correspondences in Vie et mort d’un étang by Marie Gevers and Il pleut dans ma maison by Paul Willems
The work of Marie Gevers and Paul Willems offers a poetic and philosophical perspective on nature. Through water, landscapes, and the cyclical rhythm of time, they offer a reflection on the human condition, death, and the fragile beauty of existence in harmony with the natural world. Gevers’s Vie et mort d’un étang (1950) and Willems’s Il pleut dans ma maison (1962) are distinguished not only by their ability to give voice to nature, but also by the subtle connections that establish a dialogue between their works. This article offers an analysis of these works by Gevers and Willems, drawing on the perspective of ecopoetics, and ancient and modern philosophical movements. It highlights how these authors give nature a central and autonomous role in their narratives.
Copyright (c) 2025 Karolina Tymura https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Space and Time in the Theatre of Matei Vișniec: Strategies of Dramaturgical Exploitation
The theatrical work of Matei Vișniec explores spatio-temporal relationships through a dynamic interplay between the visible (scenic space) and the invisible (extra-scenic space), where objects and locations embody symbolic thresholds between the interior and the exterior. Enclosed spaces contrast with intermediate zones (windows, doors), which materialise aspirations towards an invisible elsewhere. These spatial tensions, amplified by transitional objects imbued with functional and metaphorical duality, reveal alienation and the quest for identity. Meanwhile, the extra-scenic, such as crowds, rats, or carnivals, acts as an elusive collective force, manifesting as grotesque or anonymous phenomena that mirror the contradictions of the human condition.
Copyright (c) 2025 Abdellah Zine El Abidine https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Correspondences Between the Original Text and the Polish Translation of The Legend and the Heroic, Joyous and Glorious Adventures of Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak in the Land of Flanders and Elsewhere by Charles De Coster
Charles De Coster’s La Légende d’Ulenspiegel was deemed by Young Belgians a national epic. The novel has been translated into many languages, including Polish. The first Polish translation was published in 1914. The article aims to present how Przecław Smolik, the Polish translator of the novel, translated cultural references to Belgium and particularly to Flanders. The research concerns the strategies and techniques adopted for translating cultural references and Dutch loanwords, but also para-texts such as footnotes and the preface. The analysis reveals the omission of several chapters in the Polish translation and the non-preservation of certain Dutch loanwords in the translated text. However, the historical context of the novel has been well described in the preface.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tomasz Zielnik https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
“The Last Generation Able to Change Everything” – Thematic and Formal Correspondences Between Polish and French Slogans Taken from the Placards of Young Environmental Activists
This article analyses thematic and lexical correspondences between the Polish and French slogans used during youth climate protests. Based on a corpus of 500 slogans per country, collected online between 2018 and 2023, it identifies three types of correspondence: complete, partial, and absence of correspondence. Complete correspondences share lexical and syntactic similarities and express a universal call for environmental change. Partial correspondences share similar themes despite formal differences. The absence of correspondence stems from local issues, untranslatable wordplay, or specific cultural contexts. The study highlights both the cultural specificity of the slogans and global concerns about climate change. It also explores the global and local dimensions of slogan production: global through complete and partial correspondences, and local through culturally rooted mismatches. The research shows how language reflects identity and collective thinking around shared goals.
universality of environmental problems in language
Copyright (c) 2025 Michalina Buler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Influence of the Media Linguistic Imaginary on Foreign Language Learning in Primary and Secondary Schools: an Analysis of Adjectives in the Press Through the Czech National Corpus
This study, part of our doctoral thesis on foreign language learning in the Czech Republic, examines the influence of media-driven linguistic imagination on students’ language choices. Using the Czech National Corpus, this research identifies the most common adjectives associated with five foreign languages (English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish) and assesses their potential impact on students’ language preferences in primary and secondary schools.
Czech National Corpus (Český národní korpus)
Copyright (c) 2025 Moïse Lemonnier https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0