Ravishing Maidens

Download or read book Ravishing Maidens written by Kathryn Gravdal and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study of sexual violence and rape in French medieval literature and law, Kathryn Gravdal examines an array of famous works never before analyzed in connection with sexual violence. Gravdal demonstrates the variety of techniques through which medieval discourse made rape acceptable: sometimes through humor and aestheticization, sometimes through the use of social and political themes, but especially through the romanticism of rape scenes.

Download or read book The Sacred and the Sinister written by David J. Collins, S. J. and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-03-20 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the work of eminent scholar Richard Kieckhefer, The Sacred and the Sinister explores the ambiguities that made (and make) medieval religion and magic so difficult to differentiate. The essays in this collection investigate how the holy and unholy were distinguished in medieval Europe, where their characteristics diverged, and the implications of that deviation. In the Middle Ages, the natural world was understood as divinely created and infused with mysterious power. This world was accessible to human knowledge and susceptible to human manipulation through three modes of engagement: religion, magic, and science. How these ways of understanding developed in light of modern notions of rationality is an important element of ongoing scholarly conversation. As Kieckhefer has emphasized, ambiguity and ambivalence characterize medieval understandings of the divine and demonic powers at work in the world. The ten chapters in this volume focus on four main aspects of this assertion: the cult of the saints, contested devotional relationships and practices, unsettled judgments between magic and religion, and inconclusive distinctions between magic and science. Freshly insightful, this study of ambiguity between magic and religion will be of special interest to scholars in the fields of medieval studies, religious studies, European history, and the history of science. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume are Michael D. Bailey, Kristi Woodward Bain, Maeve B. Callan, Elizabeth Casteen, Claire Fanger, Sean L. Field, Anne M. Koenig, Katelyn Mesler, and Sophie Page.

Download or read book Medieval Virginities written by Ruth Evans and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The variety of subjects and disciplines represented here testify both to the elusiveness of virginity and to its lasting appeal and importance. Medieval Virginities shows how virginity's inherent ambiguity highlights the problems, contradictions and discontinuities lurking within medieval ideologies.

Download or read book Of Good and Ill Repute written by Barbara A. Hanawalt and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In eleven interrelated essays, this text explores the roles that community, family and society played in maintaining social control in medieval England. The essays focus on gender, criminal behaviour, law enforcement, and much more.

Download or read book Troubling Arthurian Histories written by James R. Simpson and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2007 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a range of approaches in cultural, gender and literary studies, this book presents Chrétien de Troyes's Erec et Enide as a daring and playful exploration of scandal, terror and anxiety in court cultures. Through an interdisciplinary reading, it locates Erec et Enide, the first surviving Arthurian romance in French, in various contexts, from broad cultural and historical questionings such as medieval vernacular 'modernity's' engagement with the weight of its classical inheritance, to the culturally fecund and politically turbulent histories of the families of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II Plantagenet. Where previous accounts of the tale have not uncommonly presented Chrétien's poem as a decorous 'resolution' of tensions between dynastic marriage and fin'amors, between personal desire and social duty, this reading sees these forces as in permanent and irresolvable tension, the poem's key scenes haunted - whether mischievously or traumatically - by questions and skeletons from various closets.

Download or read book Honour and Disgrace written by Isabel Pérez Molina and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study analyses the legal condition of women in Catalonia, Spain, in the early modern ages, particularly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by way of the study of primary legal sources. The legal discourse was conceived as being different for men and women: women were treated as a specific social category, were judicially discriminated against and were given inferior legal personality. Following the moral discourse of the time, jurists classified women as honest and dishonest, and tried to establish a physical and legal barrier to divide the good from the bad. As a result, women were before the law, pawns for male decisions. However, women did not easily comply with the submissive role attributed to them and, as civil lawsuits show, often they used the law that discriminated them in their own benefit.

Download or read book The Grail written by Dhira B. Mahoney and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.