La nuda vox: Sound, text, and bare life in the legends of the saints

The discourse of saints\u27 lives is anchored on diverse textual strategies. On one hand, it is rooted on notions of the imitatio Christi, as stemming from Pauline discourse and its interpretations in texts about red martyrdoms. On the other, it relies heavily on references to acts of speech, quotations, and to sound and voice as a form of ensoniment, a term coined by Jonathan Sterne. The combination of these elements produces a textual soundscape, in which interjections, cries, grunts, yelps, song, and prayer as sonic instances of the transformation of a human being into a saint. This soundscape, given the value accorded to sound, may be seen as an expression of the saint as a subject. Aided with Giorgio Agamben\u27s notions of bare life and the homo sacer, this project aims to demonstrate the saints\u27 sonic passage to a reduced quality of life, la nuda vita , and their relationship with two codes of law: earthly and divine. The textual instances analyzed include the Legenda aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, the Vita of Saint Guinefort, the Vita Beati Aemiliani of Saint Braulius, the Vida de San Millán de la Cogolla of Gonzalo de Berceo, the Miracles de Nostre Dame of Gautier de Coinci, the Cantigas de Santa María of Alfonso X. Each instance from these texts presents a pattern in which the reduction of a saint to bare life is accompanied what I call the soundscape of saintliness