TY - BOOK ID - 85472529 TI - Sexual culture in the literature of medieval Britain AU - Hopkins, Amanda AU - Rouse, Robert Allen AU - Rushton, Cory PY - 2014 SN - 1782043020 184384379X 1843844443 PB - Suffolk : Boydell & Brewer, DB - UniCat KW - Literature KW - Belles-lettres KW - Western literature (Western countries) KW - World literature KW - Philology KW - Authors KW - Authorship KW - History and criticism. KW - Literature, Medieval KW - English literature KW - Sex in literature. KW - Alchemical treatises. KW - Britain. KW - British history. KW - Chaucer. KW - Eroticism. KW - Gender roles. KW - Literature. KW - Malory. KW - Medieval sexuality. KW - Medieval. KW - Romance. KW - Sexual culture. KW - anthropology. KW - medeival romance. KW - medieval English culture. KW - medieval English society. KW - medieval history. KW - sociology. KW - women and gender studies. KW - women's studies'. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:85472529 AB - 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 bya 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 possibilitiesand 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. Contributors: Aisling Byrne, Anna Caughey, Kristina Hildebrand, Amy S. Kaufman, Yvette Kisor, Megan G. Leitch, Cynthea Masson, Hannah Priest, Samantha J. Rayner, Robert Allen Rouse, Cory James Rushton, Amy N. Vines. ER -