PUBLIC LECTURE: Medieval Edens: Gender, Power and Death in Paradise

This lecture considers what some of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages imagined life would have been like if the Fall from Eden had not occurred, and what those imaginations told them about life in their present existence. This harking-back to Paradise was essentially a search for origins: by finding the starting-points of forms of behaviour, ideals, institutions and sacraments, the rationale of God’s creation could, it was believed, be better understood. Beginning with the views of the controversial John Wyclif, I shall investigate what several major schoolmen thought the Eden narrative meant for three crucial aspects of the human condition: gender, death and power.