Overview

An examination into aspects of the sexual as depicted in a variety of medieval texts, from Chaucer and Malory to romance and alchemical treatises. It is often said that the past is a foreign country where they do things differently, and perhaps no type of ""doing"" is more fascinating than sexual desires and behaviours. Our modern view of medieval sexuality is characterised bya polarising dichotomy between the swooning love-struck knights and ladies of romance on one hand, and the darkly imagined and misogyny of an unenlightened ""medieval"" sexuality on the other. British medieval sexual culture also exhibits such dualities through the influential paradigms of sinner or saint, virgin or whore, and protector or defiler of women. However, such sexual identities are rarely coherent or stable, and it is in the grey areas, the interstices between normative modes of sexuality, that we find the most compelling instances of erotic frisson and sexual expression. This collection of essays brings together a wide-ranging discussion of the sexual possibilitiesand fantasies of medieval Britain as they manifest themselves in the literature of the period. Taking as their matter texts and authors as diverse as Chaucer, Gower, Dunbar, Malory, alchemical treatises, and romances, the contributions reveal a surprising variety of attitudes, strategies and sexual subject positions. Amanda Hopkins teaches in English and French at the University of Warwick; Robert Allen Rouse is Associate Professor of English atthe University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Cory James Rushton is Associate Professor of English at St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada. Contributors: Aisling Byrne, Anna Caughey, Kristina Hildebrand, Amy S. Kaufman, Yvette Kisor, Megan G. Leitch, Cynthea Masson, Hannah Priest, Samantha J. Rayner, Robert Allen Rouse, Cory James Rushton, Amy N. Vines

Full Product Details

Author:   Amanda Hopkins ,  Robert Rouse (Customer) ,  Cory James Rushton (Customer) ,  Dr Aisling Byrne
Publisher:   Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Imprint:   D.S. Brewer
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.486kg
ISBN:  

9781843843795

ISBN 10:   184384379
Pages:   192
Publication Date:   21 August 2014
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: A Light Thrown upon Darkness: Writing about Medieval British Sexuality - Robert Rouse Introduction: A Light Thrown upon Darkness: Writing about Medieval British Sexuality - Cory Rushton Open Manslaughter and Bold Bawdry: Male Sexuality as a Cause of Disruption in Malory's Morte Darthur - Kristina Hildebrand Erotic (Subject) Positions in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale - Amy S. Kaufman Enter the Bedroom: Managing Space for the Erotic in Middle English Romance - Megan G. Leitch 'Naked as a nedyll': The Eroticism of Malory's Elaine - Yvette Kisor 'How love and I togedre met': Gower, Amans and the Lessons of Venus in the Confessio Amantis - Samantha J. Rayner 'Bogeysliche as a boye': Performing Sexuality in William of Palerne - Hannah Priest Fairy Lovers: Sexuality, Order and Narrative in Medieval Romance - Aisling Byrne Text as Stone: Desire, Sex and the Figurative Hermaphrodite in the Ordinal and Compound of Alchemy - Cynthea Masson Animality, Sexuality and the Abject in Three of Dunbar's Satirical Poems - Anna Caughey The Awful Passion of Pandarus - Cory Rushton Invisible Woman: Rape as a Chivalric Necessity in Medieval Romance - Amy N. Vines

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Highly recommended. CHOICE

Author Information

ROBERT ROUSE Associate Professor, Department of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. MEGAN G. LEITCH is the Professor and Chair of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the University of Groningen. ROBERT ROUSE Associate Professor, Department of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

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