Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Introduction: The Revel, the Melodye and the Bisynesse of Solas
- ‘So wel koude he me glose’: The Wife of Bath and the Eroticism of Touch
- The Lady's Man: Gawain as Lover in Middle English Literature
- Erotic Magic: The Enchantress in Middle English Romance
- ‘wordy vnthur wede’: Clothing, Nakedness and the Erotic in some Romances of Medieval Britain
- ‘Some Like it Hot’: The Medieval Eroticism of Heat
- How's Your Father? Sex and the Adolescent Girl in Sir Degarré
- The Female ‘Jewish’ Libido in Medieval Culture
- Eros and Error: Gross Sexual Transgression in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi
- Perverse and Contrary Deeds: The Giant of Mont Saint Michel and the Alliterative Morte Arthure
- Her Desire and His: Letters between Fifteenth-century Lovers
- Sex in the Sight of God: Theology and the Erotic in Peter of Blois' ‘Grates ago veneri’
- A Fine and Private Place
- Erotic Historiography: Writing the Self and History in Twelfth-century Romance and the Renaissance
- Index
Erotic Historiography: Writing the Self and History in Twelfth-century Romance and the Renaissance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Introduction: The Revel, the Melodye and the Bisynesse of Solas
- ‘So wel koude he me glose’: The Wife of Bath and the Eroticism of Touch
- The Lady's Man: Gawain as Lover in Middle English Literature
- Erotic Magic: The Enchantress in Middle English Romance
- ‘wordy vnthur wede’: Clothing, Nakedness and the Erotic in some Romances of Medieval Britain
- ‘Some Like it Hot’: The Medieval Eroticism of Heat
- How's Your Father? Sex and the Adolescent Girl in Sir Degarré
- The Female ‘Jewish’ Libido in Medieval Culture
- Eros and Error: Gross Sexual Transgression in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi
- Perverse and Contrary Deeds: The Giant of Mont Saint Michel and the Alliterative Morte Arthure
- Her Desire and His: Letters between Fifteenth-century Lovers
- Sex in the Sight of God: Theology and the Erotic in Peter of Blois' ‘Grates ago veneri’
- A Fine and Private Place
- Erotic Historiography: Writing the Self and History in Twelfth-century Romance and the Renaissance
- Index
Summary
THIS VOLUME investigates the presence of the erotic in a certain historical period, the Middle Ages. But eroticism is also a key trope in our attempts to define what is distinctive about historical periods. That is, it is not only an object of study, but also functions in terms of mapping the boundaries of the field of study: it has historiographic value. As an example of the almost gravitational attraction that the erotic can possess for those seeking to draw period distinctions, we might begin with a piece by Hugo Estenssoro that appeared in The Times Literary Supplement on the seven hundredth anniversary of the birth of Francesco Petrarca, under the title ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’:
It is [Petrarch] who is the initiator of a way of being that, within limits, is still ours today … the modern Western lyrical tradition begins with Petrarch … Nothing comparable existed in classical or medieval literature, before Petrarch celebrated the self in each and every one of the poet's fluctuating states of mind and feeling throughout his adult life … all previous literature (including Petrarch's own Latin writings) lacks the elements we find in his work, for the simple reason that he was the one poet to embody in his poems, a new way of being human, a sensibility that was eventually to become what we see as modern man.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain , pp. 164 - 176Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007