Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages (eBook, PDF)

Redaktion: Tracy, Larissa

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Essays exploring medieval castration, as reflected in archaeology, law, historical record, and literary motifs.

Castration and castrati have always been facets of western culture, from myth and legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding harems to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century castrati singers. Metaphoric castration pervadesa number of medieval literary genres, particularly the Old French fabliaux - exchanges of power predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified by genitalia - but the plain, literal act of castration and its implications are often overlooked.
This collection explores this often taboo subject and its implications for cultural mores and custom in Western Europe, seeking to demystify and demythologize castration. Its subjects includearchaeological studies of eunuchs; historical accounts of castration in trials of combat; the mutilation of political rivals in medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and Frisian legal and literary examples of castration as punishment; castration as comedy in the Old French fabliaux; the prohibition against genital mutilation in hagiography; and early-modern anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan stage. The introduction reflects on these topics in the context of arguably the most well-known victim of castration in the middle ages, Abelard.

LARISSA TRACY is Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at Longwood University.

Contributors: Larissa Tracy, Kathryn Reusch, Shaun Tougher, Jack Collins, Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Jay Paul Gates, Charlene M. Eska, Mary A. Valante, Anthony Adams, Mary E. Leech, Jed Chandler, Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, Robert L.A. Clark, Karin Sellberg, LenaWånggren

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in A, D ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wits University Press
• Seitenzahl: 365
• Erscheinungstermin: 18. Juli 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781782041108
• Artikelnr.: 56962008

Autorenporträt

Larissa Tracy

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction: A History of Calamities: The Culture of Castration - Larissa
Tracy Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration - Kathryn Reusch The
Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs - Shaun Tougher
Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early
Christianity - Jack Collins 'Al defouleden is holie bodi': Castration, the
Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English
Legendary - Larissa Tracy The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never
Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law - Rolf H.
Bremmer The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject -
Jay Paul Gates 'Imbrued in their owne bloud': Castration in Early Welsh and
Irish Sources - Charlene Eska Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade,
and the Value of Eunuchs - Mary A. Valante 'He took a stone away':
Castration and Cruelty in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga - Anthony Adams The
Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and Masculine
Identity in La dame escolliee - Mary E Leech Eunuchs of the Grail - Jed
Chandler Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A Castration Motif in Guillaume
de Lorris's Romans de la rose - Ellen Lorraine Friedrich Culture Loves a
Void: Eunuchry in Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Fèvre's La Vieille -
Robert L. A. Clark The Dismemberment of Will: Early Modern Fear of
Castration - Lena Wånggren and Karin Sellberg