Transgresiones sexuales, tradiciones discursivas y oralidad en el castellano medieval

Abstract

The study of sexual transgression from a linguistic perspective entails some difficulty when applied to the medieval Castilian language. Such complexity calls for specific insights, based both on the search for the foundations of medieval culture as well as on the consideration of the writing process undergone at large by this language. This article has, therefore, paid attention to the evolution of the theological and canonical Christian formulation and to its effects on the parallel configuration of common law and social mores, all of which will help us understand the defining frames of sexual transgression at that time. As for the lexical field, I have analyzed the verbal evolution of transgressive sexual formulae, according to that of the language from its oral stage into the written mode. I have Also taken into account the characteristics of some discourse traditions, as these changed in their response to orality from permeability to rejection and to further acceptance (once the literary language was endowed with the devices and genres that allowed the proper enactment of the communicative exchange pattern).