ABSTRACT
The broadest intellectual framework for this examination of Foy’s cults is provided by cultural studies, especially the version formulated by Stuart Hall, which defines cultural production as the entire range of a society’s arts, beliefs, institutions, and communication. Taking what Mieke Bal calls “a reception-oriented perspective of cultural critique” enables a focus on “the interaction between the visual and verbal ‘behavior’ of those who deal with, process, or consume” texts of all kinds. Whereas some cultural theorists have emphasized the ways in which institutions simply seek to reproduce their own power, changes in the cults of Sainte Foy suggest that creativity and variation are inherent in acts of appropriation across space and through time. Identifying the cultural forces at work in a given medieval site is often difficult when comprehensive data is lacking, which is an all too familiar situation for medieval researchers.
