Burgon Presents at Symposium
Haleigh Burgon recently presented a paper at the “2024 Manuscript (HE)ART Symposium,” a conference initiated by organizers from Princeton and the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence to honor Dr. Jesse Hurlbut, one of her past professors and mentors. Haleigh tells us:
“My paper was entitled, “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow? : A Reflection on Symbolic Marian Floral and Faunal Imagery in Late Medieval French Manuscripts and More…” I began by examining the image of the rose in its visual form in manuscript marginalia and in the Ghent Altarpiece, as well as in its textual form in a 15th-century Cambrai Meditation. I also explored the Marian imagery in Émile Zola’s novel Fécondité, specifically with his characters Marianne and Rose. In Zola’s modification of traditional Marian symbolism, we witness his anxieties about the depopulation of France after the devastating loss of the Franco-Prussian War. His glorification of the fertile mother imbues a message about ideal womanhood and his hopes for French repopulation.”
Haleigh is a student in our doctoral program on French Language & Literature.