Acknowledgments . . xiii

Introduction: Medieval Authoritative Discourse and the Disabled Female Body . . 1
1 (Dis)pleasure and (Disability: The Topos of Reproduction in Dame Sirith and the ''Merchant's Tale" . . 19
2 Physical Education: Excessive Wives and Bodily Punishment in the Book of the Knight and the "Wife of Bath's Prologue" . . 45
3 Refiguring Disability: Deviance, Punishment, and the Supernatural in Bisclavret, Sir Launfal, and the Testament of Cresseid . . 73
4 Embodied Transcendence: Disability and the Procreative Body in the Book of Margery Kempe . . 113
Conclusion . . 151

Notes . . 155
Bibliography . . 187
Index . . 201