Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Literature

Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Literature PDF Author: William E. Burgwinkle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139454765
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
William Burgwinkle surveys poetry and letters, histories and literary fiction - including Grail romances - to offer a historical survey of attitudes towards same-sex love during the centuries that gave us the Plantagenet court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, courtly love, and Arthurian lore. Burgwinkle illustrates how 'sodomy' becomes a problematic feature of narratives of romance and knighthood. Most texts of the period denounce sodomy and use accusations of sodomitical practice as a way of maintaining a sacrificial climate in which masculine identity is set in opposition to the stigmatised other, for example the foreign, the feminine, and the heretical. What emerges from these readings, however, is that even the most homophobic, masculinist and normative texts of the period demonstrate an inability or unwillingness to separate the sodomitical from the orthodox. These blurred boundaries allow readers to glimpse alternative, even homoerotic, readings.

Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Literature

Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Literature PDF Author: William E. Burgwinkle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139454765
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
William Burgwinkle surveys poetry and letters, histories and literary fiction - including Grail romances - to offer a historical survey of attitudes towards same-sex love during the centuries that gave us the Plantagenet court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, courtly love, and Arthurian lore. Burgwinkle illustrates how 'sodomy' becomes a problematic feature of narratives of romance and knighthood. Most texts of the period denounce sodomy and use accusations of sodomitical practice as a way of maintaining a sacrificial climate in which masculine identity is set in opposition to the stigmatised other, for example the foreign, the feminine, and the heretical. What emerges from these readings, however, is that even the most homophobic, masculinist and normative texts of the period demonstrate an inability or unwillingness to separate the sodomitical from the orthodox. These blurred boundaries allow readers to glimpse alternative, even homoerotic, readings.

Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Literature

Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Literature PDF Author: William E. Burgwinkle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780521839686
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
This book offers a historical survey of attitudes towards same-sex love during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Treason and Masculinity in Medieval England

Treason and Masculinity in Medieval England PDF Author: E. Amanda McVitty
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783275553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Groundbreaking new approach to the idea of treason in medieval England, showing the profound effect played by gender.

'Piers Plowman' and the Medieval Discourse of Desire

'Piers Plowman' and the Medieval Discourse of Desire PDF Author: Fellow of King's College Cambridge and Newton Trust Lecturer in English Nicolette Zeeman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521856108
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description
This ambitious study links William Langland's great poem Piers Plowman to wider medieval enquiries into the nature of intellectual and spiritual desire. Zeeman's radical approach opens up a completely fresh reading of Piers Plowman and sheds light on the history of medieval psychology.

Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages

Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Robert Mills
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022616926X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
During the Middle Ages in Europe, some sexual and gendered behaviors were labeled “sodomitical” or evoked the use of ambiguous phrases such as the “unmentionable vice” or the “sin against nature.” How, though, did these categories enter the field of vision? How do you know a sodomite when you see one? In Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages, Robert Mills explores the relationship between sodomy and motifs of vision and visibility in medieval culture, on the one hand, and those categories we today call gender and sexuality, on the other. Challenging the view that ideas about sexual and gender dissidence were too confused to congeal into a coherent form in the Middle Ages, Mills demonstrates that sodomy had a rich, multimedia presence in the period—and that a flexible approach to questions of terminology sheds new light on the many forms this presence took. Among the topics that Mills covers are depictions of the practices of sodomites in illuminated Bibles; motifs of gender transformation and sex change as envisioned by medieval artists and commentators on Ovid; sexual relations in religious houses and other enclosed spaces; and the applicability of modern categories such as “transgender,” “butch” and “femme,” or “sexual orientation” to medieval culture. Taking in a multitude of images, texts, and methodologies, this book will be of interest to all scholars, regardless of discipline, who engage with gender and sexuality in their work.

Medieval Writings on Sex between Men

Medieval Writings on Sex between Men PDF Author: David Rollo
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004507329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
David Rollo translates, for the first time together, Peter Damian’s The Book of Gomorrah and Alain de Lille’s The Plaint of Nature, the most famous medieval writings on male same-sex relations. He also provides critical commentaries to situate both in historical and cultural context.

Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature

Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature PDF Author: Simon Gaunt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521464943
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Wide-ranging study of gender and the underlying ideologies of Old French and Occitan literature.

A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages

A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Ruth Evans
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350995304
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Historians of sexuality have often assumed that medieval people were less interested in sex than we are. But people in the Middle Ages wrote a great deal about sex: in confessors' manuals, in virginity treatises, and in literary texts. This volume looks afresh at the cultural meanings that sex had throughout the period, presenting new evidence and offering new interpretations of known material. Acknowledging that many of the categories that we use today to talk about sexuality are inadequate for understanding sex in premodern times, the volume draws on important recent work in the historiography of medieval sexuality to address the conceptual and methodological challenges the period presents. A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages presents an overview of the period with essays on heterosexuality, homosexuality, sexual variations, religious and legal issues, health concerns, popular beliefs about sexuality, prostitution and erotica.

Sexuality in Medieval Europe

Sexuality in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Ruth Mazo Karras
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000859274
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Now in its fourth edition, Sexuality in Medieval Europe provides a lively account of a society whose attitudes toward sexuality both were ancestral to, and differed from, contemporary ones. The volume is structured not by types of sexual interactions or deviance, but to reflect the difference in gendered experiences when sex is seen as an act one person does to another. Sexual activity, within and outside of marriage, as well as sexual inactivity, had different meanings based on gender, social status, religious affiliation, and more. This book considers these iterations of medieval sexuality in its effort to show there was no single medieval attitude towards sexuality. With an emphasis on Christian Western Europe over the entire course of the Middle Ages, it also includes comparative material on neighboring cultures at the time. Alongside being reworked for further clarity and readability, the fourth edition offers substantial new material on trans scholarship and methodological attempts to recoup a trans past; changes in the treatment of sex work and its terminology; and new material on Byzantine and Muslim culture. Sexuality in Medieval Europe is an essential resource for all those who study medieval history, medieval culture, and the history of sexuality in Europe.

Medieval Futurity

Medieval Futurity PDF Author: Will Rogers
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501513974
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This collection of essays asks contributors to take the capaciousness of the word "queer" to heart in order to think about what medieval queers would have looked like and how they may have existed on the margins and borders of dominant, normative sexuality and desire. The contributors work with recent trends in queer medieval studies, blending together modern concepts of sexuality and desire with the queer configurations of eroticism, desire, and materiality as they might have existed for medieval audiences.