A Human Nugget: The Potentiality of Women's Bodies in Medieval Times through The King of Tars and Two-Egg Theory

In the tale of The King of Tars, a Christian woman and a Pagan sultan are wed and produce a monstrous child: limbless, a round of flesh with no blood or bone, no eyes or nose or other facial features, and stone cold dead. While the tale goes on (spoiler alert: converting to Christianity fixes everything), viewing the scene of the child's birth and existence alongside classical and medieval thought on the potentiality of women's bodies can, in a way, explain everything. A major feature in Aristotle's thinking of conception and women's bodies is that a child's creation required man's sperm, the uniqueness and provider of a soul, with the mother acting as a passive vessel. A woman's body in this Aristotelian concept is additionally the provider of a physical potentiality of a child -- which is a logical jump because a period is a (failed) potentiality to create life. Because this potentiality alone cannot produce a life, a period exists; but add semen to the mix, and poof! Automagically a baby is born (or so says medieval thought). However, Aristotle is not the only philosopher whose contributions make it into The King of Tars -- this is where Galen and his Two-Seed Theory comes into play. Two-Seed Theory is essentially assuming that a man's seed (sperm) and a woman's seed (ovum) fight a battle of epic proportions, and whichever emerges victorious is the parent whom the child shares its appearance. With a combination of Aristotle's view that woman is simply a physical matter-producing vessel, representing only the potential for life, and Galen's idea of the Two-Seed process wherein either parent's appearance could become the child's basic structural pattern, one option is that because a woman is incapable of producing a body with a soul or any unique features they are blessed with a human version of a chicken nugget. Granted, this not only would support Aristotle's idea of woman being unable to create life, but also follow many other medieval beliefs about where the blame of an imperfect baby stems from: the mother. In our previous text on the Man of Law's Tale we discussed that the state of an imperfect child is considered entirely the fault of the mother in medieval thought, due to either the moisture level of the womb, the temperature, the (im)purity of the mother's thoughts, or any number of reasons. One argument that could be made is that because the mother is naturally flawed, even if she has the correct moisture, temperature, and pure thoughts, she still produces offspring with a major deformity because her "seed" was victorious in Galen's understanding, but was unable to produce a normal infant because such a seed is only a potentiality without the aid of a man's sperm in Aristotle's understanding.

Of course, as the main character is a Christian woman, everyone else needs to just convert to Christianity and everyone will live in a magic fairytale land, happily ever after. Jesus will shed tears of rainbows and bless the nugget as the king of all nuggets, dubbed Nugget McDonald, ruler of McDonald Land.
                        

Nugget army of King Nugget McDonald