Where the Middle Ages Begin
In this paper I re-examine Blanchandine‘s sex change in light of its relation to the issue of incest; as I will show, incest is directly related to the sex change and also punctuates the narrative at other points. Tristan de Nanteuil depicts two sexual and/or romantic relationships between cousins…
The famous line from that modern romance- “A kiss is just a kiss”- is the message the Gawain-poet gave his listeners six centuries ago.
BOOK REVIEW: A Triple Knot by Emma Campion I had the pleasure of reading another Emma Campion (Candace Robb) novel recently. Campion, who has written extensively about Alice Perrers, the royal mistress of King Edward III, in her hit, The King’s Mistress, is back on the shelves with a new book released this month entitled: A Triple Knot. This […]
The prevalent use of cosmetics among women fast became a topic for moralist discourse, both inside and out of the Peninsula.
Associated to the practice of gossip, bartering, display and selling of her trinkets around neighborhoods and streets, the old woman was allowed into the female domestic spaces of late medieval Europe.
This dissertation discusses medieval and Renaissance clerical and cultural constructions of femininity and female masculinity, and it analyses the complex relationship between such conceptions and the literary representation of the transvestite woman.
Women going around dressed as men, wearing men’s hats, and even having their hair cut short, was not an acceptable practice in medieval society. However, in late medieval London there were at least 13 cases of women accused of doing just that.
This dissertation argues that martial virtues and images of the soldier’s life represented an essential aspect of early Byzantine masculine ideology. It contends that in many of the visual and literary sources from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE, conceptualisations of the soldier’s life and the ideal manly life were often the same.
The late fourteenth-century romance Sir Launfal narrates the financial, martial and erotic adventures of one of the lesser-known knights of the Arthurian court.
According to quite a few books and films produced in the last few decades in Europe and North America, sex is widely celebrated in Jewish sources
Cassone and spalliere panels depicting the Old Testament Book of Esther were produced by a number of Florentine artists during the fifteenth century.
Why do Jews have such a low reproduction rate? And is this something that also characterized them in earlier periods?
There are countless practical issues surrounding the study of women and their sexuality during the Middle Ages. An unfortunate fact is that the majority of contemporary sources available from this period were written, compiled or transcribed by men. It can, as such, be incredibly difficult to detect the medieval women’s voice.
Love is in the air! Here are a few medieval books on the topic of love for your Valentine.
Perhaps one of the most straightforward elements of beauty was the skin. Pale and undamaged skin was considered the most beautiful for women.
In this article, I will analyze testimony relevant to the charges of the Inquisition that members of the order of Knights Templar throughout Christendom practiced homosexual acts of various sorts from illicit kisses to sodomy.
When researching early or ‘forbidden’ historical subjects it can be a considerable challenge finding primary sources that give a first-hand experience of contemporary events.
How sacred is the Synagogue? Can a woman enter this holy place while menstruating? What is more sacred: the space, or the Holy objects within it?
This essay explores two parallel trajectories of mythic retrospection: medieval “myths” of the Biblical past (like Birgitta’s prophetic visions), and modern “myths” of the medieval past (like Kristeva’s survey).
A Male Transvestite Prostitution In 14th Century London: The Testimony of John Rykener By Erkan Oruçoğlu Published Online (2013) Introduction: Studies of sexuality, homosexuality, and sex in public places, show that homosexual behavior does not give arise automatically, or even necessarily, to a homosexual identity. Homosexual roles and identities are historically constructed. Throughout the history of […]
Historians continue to debate the the full extent to which priests had relationships with women, but unchaste clergy on the European Continent have been more forthrightly acknowledged and studied than those in England.
Examines literature on the medieval traditions associated with Welsh holy women. Prerequisites for feminine sanctity; Biographical pattern of the female saints; Implications of the popularity of the Welsh women saints.
This article examines the change in women’s fashion that occurred during the 12th century. Garments went from loose and flowing to tightly fitted, featuring belts and laces. The author examines this cultural change through the romance stories complied in the “Lais” of Marie de France, specifically one featuring the character of Guigemar.
In medieval theology, Mary‘s body, as the physical site of the Incarnation, provided an opportunity for speculation about the relationship between divinity and humanity…An examination of how Marian imagery is used as a rhetorical and meditative device in devotional texts will shed light on the way the relationship between human body and divine spirit was experienced.
An Alsatian poet named Heinrich, writing around 1180, composed a beast epic, based on French sources, about a trickster fox named Reinhart. Some sixty years later, a poet known to us only as Der Stricker composed a work of similar length and structure, about a trickster priest named Amis, and his diligent efforts to cheat various anonymous individuals out of their money.
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