|
Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
|
Medieval Obscenities (Paperback)
Nicola F. McDonald, Nicola McDonald; Contributions by Alastair J. Alastair J. Minnis, Carolyne Larrington, Danuta Shanzer, …
|
R785
Discovery Miles 7 850
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
Obscenity is central to an understanding of medieval culture, and
it is here examined in a number of different media. Obscenity is,
if nothing else, controversial. Its definition, consumption and
regulation fire debate about the very meaning of art and culture,
law, politics and ideology. And it is often, erroneously, assumed
to be synonymous with modernity. Medieval Obscenities examines the
complex and contentious role of the obscene - what is offensive,
indecent or morally repugnant - in medieval culture from late
antiquity through to the end of the Middle Ages in western Europe.
Its approach is multidisciplinary, its methodologies divergent and
it seeks to formulate questions and stimulate debate. The essays
examine topics as diverse as Norse defecation taboos, the
Anglo-Saxon sexual idiom, sheela-na-gigs, impotence in the church
courts, bare ecclesiastical bottoms, rude sounds and dirty words,
as well as the modern reception and representation of the medieval
obscene. They demonstrate not only the vitality of medieval
obscenity, but its centrality to our understanding of the Middle
Ages and ourselves. Contributors: MICHAEL CAMILLE, GLENN DAVIS,
EMMA DILLON, SIMON GAUNT, JEREMY GOLDBERG, EAMONN KELLY, CAROLYNE
LARRINGTON, NICOLAMCDONALD, ALASTAIR MINNIS, DANUTA SHANZER
Pulp fictions of medieval England comprises ten essays on
individual popular romances; with a focus on romances that, while
enormously popular in the Middle Ages, have been neglected by
modern scholarship. Each essay provides valuable introductory
material, and there is a sustained argument across the
contributions that the romances invite innovative, exacting and
theoretically charged analysis. However, the essays do not support
a single, homogenous reading of popular romance: the authors work
with assumptions and come to conclusions about issues as
fundamental as the genre's aesthetic codes, its political and
cultural ideologies, and its historical consciousness that are
different and sometimes opposed. Nicola McDonald's collection and
the romances it investigates, are crucial to our understanding of
the aesthetics of medieval narrative and to the ideologies of
gender and sexuality, race, religion, political formations, social
class, ethics, morality and national identity with which those
narratives engage.
Medieval romances with their magic fountains, brave knights, and
beautiful maidens have come to stand for the Middle Ages more
generally. This close connection between the medieval and the
romance has had consequences for popular conceptions of the Middle
Ages, an idealized fantasy of chivalry and hierarchy, and also for
our understanding of romances, as always already archaic, part of a
half-forgotten past. And yet, romances were one of the most
influential and long-lasting innovations of the medieval period. To
emphasize their novelty is to see the resources medieval people had
for thinking about their contemporary concern and controversies,
whether social order, Jewish/ Christian relations, the Crusades,
the connectivity of the Mediterranean, women's roles as mothers,
and how to write a national past. This volume takes up the
challenge to 'think romance', investigating the various ways that
romances imagine, reflect, and describe the challenges of the
medieval world.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|