Introduction : medieval authoritative discourse and the disabled female body -- (Dis)pleasure and (dis)ability : the topos of reproduction in Dame Sirith and the "Merchant's tale" -- Physical education : excessive wives and bodily punishment in the Book of the knight and The wife of Bath's prologue -- Refiguring disability : deviance, punishment, and the supernatural in Bisclavret, Sir Launfal, and the Testament of Cresseid -- Embodied transcendence : disability and the procreative body in The book of Margery Kempe