The later Middle Ages saw the emergence of an integral theory of human sexuality, a systematic account of its origins, role, and significance in the divine plan. Instead of simply dismissing medieval views of sex as misogynist and guilt-ridden, Pierre Payer urges a re-examination of medieval writers' understanding of sexuality within the context of their cosmological perspective. He traces the developing consensus about what was thought to be the nature, purpose and morality of sex as conceived by writers and theologians during this period. Concentrating on the positive dimension of medieval thought on sexuality, Payer first examines views on Paradise, the Fall, and original sin and its transmission. There follows an extended discussion of marriage as the sole outlet for legitimate sexual intercourse. He then turns to the broader question of the control of sexual impulses and desires through the virtue of temperance. The book concludes with a description of virginity, which was seen to be the apex of temperance and the ideal of Christian living. Payer has assembled a vast number of textual sources from the late medieval period, presenting to the reader a variety of opinions, their development, and underlying presuppositions.

"The study then considers the treatment of rape and ravishment in a range of literary genres: in hagiography, female saints are repeatedly threatened with rape; the stories of Lucretia and Helen underpin legendary history; the acts of rape and ravishment challenge and shape chivalric order in romance; otherworldly rapes result in the conception of romance heroes. The final two chapters examine the ways in which Malory and Chaucer write and rewrite rape and ravishment."--BOOK JACKET.

A sweeping survey of sexuality in Europe from the Greeks to the present, Desire: A History of European Sexuality follows changing attitudes to two major concepts of sexual desire – desire as dangerous, polluting, and disorderly, and desire as creative, transcendent, even revolutionary – through the major turning points of European history. Chronological in structure, and wide ranging in scope, Desire addresses such topics as sex in ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, sexual contact and culture clash in Spain and colonial Mesoamerica, new attitudes toward sexuality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and sex in Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany. The book introduces the concept of "twilight moments" to describe activities seen as shameful or dishonorable, but which were tolerated when concealed by shadows, and integrates the history of heterosexuality with same-sex desire, as well as exploring the emotions of love and lust as well as the politics of sex and personal experiences. This new edition has been updated to include a new chapter on sex and imperialism and expanded discussions of Islam and trans issues. Drawing on a rich array of sources, including poetry, novels, pornography, and film, as well as court records, autobiographies, and personal letters, and written in a lively, engaging style, Desire remains an essential resource for scholars and students of the history of European sexuality, as well as women’s and gender history, social and cultural history and LGBTQ history.

An examination of the erotic in medieval literature which includes articles on the role of clothing and nudity, the tension between eroticism and transgression and religion and the erotic.

Medieval attempts to capture a glimpse of heaven range from the ethereal to the mundane, utilizing media as diverse as maps, cathedrals, songs, treatises, poems, visions and sewer systems. Heaven was at once the goal of the individual Christian life and the end of the cosmic plan. It was, simply stated, perfection. But interpretations varied from the traditional to the dangerously unique as artists and authors, theologians and visionaries struggled to define that perfection. Depending on the source, heaven's attributes vary from height to depth, darkness to light, silence to symphony; the souls within it from activity to passivity, experience to essence, participation to distant admiration. Questions addressed in this anthology include: Are erotic and spiritual love mutually exclusive? Does the soul's happiness depend on the resurrection of the body? What will be the nature of the transfigured body? Will it retain its gender? Will it have senses? Will it know desire? How can desire and fulfillment exist together? Can the human soul ever know God? Contributors to this volume examine well-known and previously unexplored texts and artefacts from historical and art historical, theological, philosophical, and literary perspectives, to complement and challenge more general surveys of the history of heaven, and above all to illuminate the richness and variety of medieval Christian ideas on heaven.

The allegories of the virtues and vices were a common teaching tool in the Middle Ages for both religious and lay audiences to learn the basic tenets of the Christian faith. The Mirroure of the Worlde makes available for the first time the unique text in the fifteenth-century British manuscript, MS. Bodley 283, which is among the last and largest works in the tradition of lay religious instruction mandated by the Fourth Lateran Council. The Mirroure is derived from conflations of the Miroir du Monde and the Somme le Roi, both vernacular treatises on vices and virtues compiled in Northeast France in the thirteenth century. Translated into Middle English by, it is believed, Stephen Scrope, the foremost English translator of the mid-fifteenth century, this edition is one of the only books of virtues and vices that contains Latin text, an inclusion that points towards a more widespread knowledge of the language among the laypeople than previously thought. Complete with explanatory notes and a glossary, The Mirroure of the Worlde widens the understanding of medieval moral instruction, religion, reading practices, and education.

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book In Covert Operations, Karma Lochrie brings the categories and cultural meanings of secrecy in the Middle Ages out into the open. Isolating five broad areas—confession, women's gossip, medieval science and medicine, marriage and the law, and sodomitic discourse—Lochrie examines various types of secrecy and the literary texts in which they are played out. She reads texts as central to Middle English studies as the "Parson's Tale," the "Miller's Tale," the Secretum Secretorum, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as well as a broad range of less familiar works, including a gynecological treatise and a little-known fifteenth-century parody in which gossip and confession become one. As she does so she reveals a great deal about the medieval past—and perhaps just as much about the early development of the concealments that shape the present day.

This groundbreaking collection brings the Middle Ages to life and conveys the distinctiveness of this diverse, constantly changing period. Thirty-eight scholars bring together one medieval world from many disparate worlds, from Connacht to Constantinople and from Tynemouth to Timbuktu. This extraordinary set of reconstructions presents the reader with a vivid re-drawing of the medieval past, offering fresh appraisals of the evidence and modern historical writing. Chapters are thematically linked in four sections: identities beliefs, social values and symbolic order power and power-structures elites, organizations and groups. Packed full of original scholarship, The Medieval World is essential reading for anyone studying medieval history.

Honorable Mention, 2020 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, given by the Modern Language Association Uncovers the queer logics of premodern religious and secular texts Putting premodern theology and poetry in dialogue with contemporary theory and politics, Queer Faith reassess the commonplace view that a modern veneration of sexual monogamy and fidelity finds its roots in Protestant thought. What if this narrative of “history and tradition” suppresses the queerness of its own foundational texts? Queer Faith examines key works of the prehistory of monogamy—from Paul to Luther, Petrarch to Shakespeare—to show that writing assumed to promote fidelity in fact articulates the affordances of promiscuity, both in its sexual sense and in its larger designation of all that is impure and disorderly. At the same time, Melissa E. Sanchez resists casting promiscuity as the ethical, queer alternative to monogamy, tracing instead how ideals of sexual liberation are themselves attached to nascent racial and economic hierarchies. Because discourses of fidelity and freedom are also discourses on racial and sexual positionality, excavating the complex historical entanglement of faith, race, and eroticism is urgent to contemporary queer debates about normativity, agency, and relationality. Deliberately unfaithful to disciplinary norms and national boundaries, this book assembles new conceptual frameworks at the juncture of secular and religious thought, political and aesthetic form. It thereby enlarges the contexts, objects, and authorized genealogies of queer scholarship. Retracing a history that did not have to be, Sanchez recovers writing that inscribes radical queer insights at the premodern foundations of conservative and heteronormative culture.

Gender in Medieval Culture provides a detailed examination of medieval society's views on both gender and sexuality, and shows how they are inextricably linked. Sex roles were clearly defined in the medieval world although there were exceptions to the rules, and this book examines both the commonplace world view and the exceptions to it. The volume looks not only at the social and economic considerations of gender but also the religious and legal implications, arguing that both ecclesiastical and secular laws governed behaviour. The book covers key topics, including femininity and masculinity and how medieval society constructed these terms; sexuality and sex; transgressive sexualities such as homosexuality, adultery and chastity; and the gendered body of Christ, including the idea of Jesus as mother and affective spirituality. Using a clear chapter structure for easy navigation and categorisation, as well as a glossary of terms, the book will be a vital resource for students of medieval history.