The Articulation of Virginity in the Medieval Chanson de nonne

The chanson de nonne presents stereotypical images of young women whose bodies and voices are trapped within the confines of a nunnery. Close examination of the architectural metaphors used to describe virginity and chastity in the Middle Ages allows comparisons to be made between the structures – metaphorical, musical and textual – that held fictitious nuns within the frame of the clerical imagination at the centre of thirteenth-century motet production.