Title: Sexual culture in the literature of medieval Britain /
Authors: Hopkins, Amanda, 1962-; Rouse, Robert Allen, 1971-; Rushton, Cory,
Year: 2014
Subjects: Literature, Medieval History and criticism; English literature History and criticism; Sex in literature; Middle English literature.; Sexuality in literature.; Literature, Medieval History and criticism.; English literature Middle English; Sex in literature.
Abstract: "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 by a 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 possibilities and 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."--Publisher's Web site.
Contents: Introduction: A Light Thrown upon Darkness: Writing about Medieval British Sexuality; --1. 'Open manslaughter and bold bawdry': Male Sexuality as a Cause of Disruption in Malory's Morte Darthur -- 2. Erotic (Subject) Positions in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale -- 3. Enter the Bedroom : Managing Space for the Erotic in Middle English Romance -- 4. 'Naked as a nedyll': The Eroticism of Malory's Elaine -- 5. 'How love and I togedre met': Gower, Amans and the Lessons of Venus in the Confessio Amantis -- 6. 'Bogeysliche as a boye': Performing Sexuality in William of Palerne -- 7. Fairy Lovers: Sexuality, Order and Narrative in Medieval Romance -- 8. Text as Stone: Desire, Sex, and the Figurative Hermaphrodite in the Ordinal and Compound of Alchemy -- 9. Animality, Sexuality and the Abject in Three of Dunbar's Satirical Poems --10. The Awful Passion of Pandarus -- 11. Invisible Woman: Rape as a Chivalric Necessity in Medieval Romance.