Among the Exeter Book riddle collection there is a group more or less explicitly of riddles which deals sex.
Licit and Illicit Sexuality in Medieval Iberia: A Survey of Las Siete Partidas
March 22, 2013 By
This thesis examines Las Siete Partidas, a thirteenth-century Castilian legal code of laws, including on marriage and illicit sexual behaviors.
Woman-Woman Love in Islamic Society
March 9, 2013 By
Women have only recently become visible at all in Islamicist/Orientalist discourse. Within most present-day Islamic states, where representation of even married heterosexual conduct is heavily censored, woman-woman sexuality remains thoroughly submerged.
The Welsh Female Saint: Patterns within a Social Framework
March 2, 2013 By
Historia Divae Monacellae, the Latin Life of Melangell is also comparatively late in composition, with the earliest manuscript being from the 16th century, but possibly drawing on earlier written sources.3 When we look at the availability of written texts relating to male saints the difference in source material is immediately evident.
Kings and Courtesans: A Study of the Pictorial Representation of French Royal Mistresses
February 24, 2013 By
As France emerged from the Middle Ages, the monarchy began to establish itself as a more stable institution and a curious development took place: the French kings began to install official mistresses at court. With this official status these women became parallel members of the royal family. They lived like queens, with various estates granted to them by the kings.
Traditions of Courtly Love and the Canterbury Tales
February 24, 2013 By
Chaucer uses both common and courtly love in the Canterbury Tales. His pilgrims represent nearly every level of the social scale and range anywhere from a knight to a miller to a parson to a pardoner. Thererfore, their status will determine what kind of tale they will tell.
Sex in the Middle Ages
February 14, 2013 By
Here are some of the more interesting pieces of research we have uncovered about sex in the Middle Ages.
The Church and sexuality in medieval Iceland
February 13, 2013 By
From its earliest days Christianity has attempted to control human sexuality. The letters of Paul and the writings of the Church Fathers praise the state of virginity above that of marriage, and within matrimony permit sex only for procreation.
Mi Suete Leuedi, Her Mi Béne: The Power and Patronage of the Heroine in Middle English Romance
February 10, 2013 By
The Middle English Romances are somewhat difficult to study as a group. In order to examine these works accurately, one must take into consideration other literature produced at the same tirne, as well as that which preceded it.
Bawdy badges and the Black Death : late medieval apotropaic devices against the spread of the plague
January 27, 2013 By
Owing to the fact that historians generally view the late medieval period as an “age of faith,” the existence ofthese remarkable objects raises some fundamental questions about the exact socio-religious nature ofmedieval culture. The primary questions, however, that need answering are: when, where, and for whom were the badges produced, and perhaps most importantly, why.
Awkward Adolescents: Male Maturation in Norse Literature
January 25, 2013 By
Although medieval masculinities have become a subject of scholarly interest, there has been relatively little discussion of the transition in Old Norse until very recently.
Syphilis in Renaissance Europe: rapid evolution of an introduced sexually transmitted disease?
January 22, 2013 By
When syphilis first appeared in Europe in 1495, it was an acute and extremely unpleasant disease. After only a few years it was less severe than it once was, and it changed over the next 50 years into a milder, chronic disease.
Anaphrodisiac Charms in the Nordic Middle Ages: Impotence, Infertility, and Magic
January 16, 2013 By
This essay, however, looks to explore, not this seductive form of charm magic, but rather its opposite, ie charm magic that prevents the consumption of a relationship, or that makes a fruitful union impossible.
Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages
January 10, 2013 By
The Middle Ages are often viewed as a repository of tradition, yet what we think of as traditional marriage was far from the only available alternative to the single state in medieval Europe.
New directions for early medieval women’s history?
December 30, 2012 By
In what follows, I will be looking largely at the period 500–1000. There is a lot of vitality in late antique women’s history in the late antique period, springing ultimately from the twin roots of feminist analysis of early Christianity, such as by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Elizabeth A. Clark, and the work of authors such as Michel Foucault and Amy Richlin on classical sexuality.
Looking Back: Medieval French Romance and the Dynamics of Seeing
December 24, 2012 By
This dissertation builds upon the work of feminist medievalists and other literary and cultural scholars to argue that sight, and objects that are seen, articulate love relationships between characters in medieval romances, and that seeing is frequently a locus of resistance to gender norms the texts both establish and refuse to accept.
Nordic Witchcraft in Transition: Impotence, Heresy and Diabolism in 14th-century Bergen
November 26, 2012 By
Within the orbit of witchcraft, what is the relationship between sexuality, heresy, and diabolism?
Singing Slave Girls (qiyan) of the Abbasid Court in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries
November 25, 2012 By
The category of slave in the Middle East encompassed a number of different duties and positions: eunuch, chattel, domestic servant, sexual subject, infantryman, concubine, entertainer, laborer, and sometimes a trusted and valued member of the household.
The Wife of Bath: a Tragic Caricature of Women
November 21, 2012 By
The Wife is characterized by a preoccupation with sex, which she uses to manipulate her husbands, of which she has had five, into acquiescing their land and money to her control.
An 11th-Century Scandal
November 18, 2012 By
Complaints from Damian about the church’s unwillingness to confront the sexual behavior of the clergy, however, met with inaction. In 1049 Damian wrote to Pope Leo IX (1048-54) about the cancer of sexual abuse that was spreading through the church: boys and adolescents were being forced and seduced into performing acts of sodomy by priests and bishops; there were problems with sexual harassment among higher clergy; and many members of the clergy were keeping concubines.
How to be a Man, Though Female: Changing Sex in Medieval Romance
November 12, 2012 By
Gender participates in a series of taxonomies that structure the social order, and it therefore participates in processes beyond itself, such as Christianity and knighthood, which are equally about identity within the world of chivalric romance. Therefore, the inscription of one often helps to define the other.
Shifting Experiences: The Changing Roles of Women in the Italian, Lowland, and German Regions of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
November 12, 2012 By
Specifically, the thesis compares and analyzes the changing roles that women could employ economically, politically, socially, and religiously.
Gender Roles and Symbolic Meaning in Njáls Saga
November 8, 2012 By
There are many examples in Njáls saga of characters who fail to adhere to their assigned gender role and as a result perpetuate the chain of events that leads the saga to its grisly conclusion.
Monstrosity in Old English and Old Icelandic Literature
October 31, 2012 By
In medieval Europe belief in monsters allowed for corresponding acceptance of the possibility of humans transforming into monsters. In medieval Iceland and Anglo-Saxon England the mixture of Christian and pagan world views and beliefs create a situation where the boundaries are not merely fluid but can be transgressed, in either direction.
Prescribing Love: Italian Jewish Physicians Writing on Lovesickness in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
October 29, 2012 By
This paper begins with a general survey of early modern European medical literature concerning lovesickness. This is followed by a short introduction to the Jewish physicians who lived and worked in the geographic area currently constituting Italy during the beginning of the early modern period, focusing on three physicians who wrote about lovesickness…
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