The Articulation of Virginity in the Medieval Chanson de nonne

Abstract

The chanson de nonne presents stereotypical images of young women whose bodies and voices are trapped within the confines of a nunnery. Close examination of the architectural metaphors used to describe virginity and chastity in the Middle Ages allows comparisons to be made between the structures — metaphorical, musical and textual — that held fictitious nuns within the frame of the clerical imagination at the centre of thirteenth-century motet production.