The medieval roots of gender and sexuality in Spanish colonial law
Marie Kelleher will discuss the medieval roots of gender and sexuality in Spanish colonial law, beginning with the written law (both secular and ecclesiastical) and how it defines the parameters of respectable female behavior.
Chaucer the Love Poet: A Study in Historical Criticism
This thesis is an historically based inquiry into the aesthetic function and moral significance of the themes of marriage, fornication, and adultery in Chaucer’s poetry about sexual love
The Trouble with ‘Female Sexuality’
Using medieval western art to speak of female sexuality is difficult.
Intersex in the Middle Ages
A brief look at how the medieval world viewed the Intersex individual.
Medieval Books for Christmas
It’s that time of year again – the mad scramble for the perfect Christmas gift for the historian, nerd, avid reader on your list. Here are a few suggestions for you – new releases for December and January!
‘Hag of the Castle:’ Women, Family, and Community in Later Medieval Ireland
In a letter written as part of his work for the Irish Department of the Ordnance Survey in 1840, Thomas O’Conor recorded his reaction to a “Sheela- na-gig” sculpture—the image of a naked woman shown exposing her genitalia (fig. 1)—that he saw on the old church at Kiltinane, Co. Tipperary.
Transvestites in the Middle Ages
An examination of the lives of the transvestite saints whose legends and myths help set Western attitudes toward transvestism.
The Episcopal Body and Sexuality in Late Medieval England
How was long-term celibacy thought to affect the health of religious men? How could medical knowledge help clerics to achieve bodily purity?
Gender and Matrimonial Litigation in the Church Courts in the Later Middle Ages: The Evidence of the Court of York
If some later medieval males thought the courts were biased, what might the female perspective have been?
Prevention Strategies and Changes in Sexual Mores in Response to the Outbreak of Syphilis in Europe in the Early Modern Age
Prevention Strategies and Changes in Sexual Mores in Response to the Outbreak of Syphilis in Europe in the Early Modern Age By Eugenia…
The Lewd, the Crude and the Downright Rude: Heterosexual Sex in Medieval Western Europe
If one has never really considered thinking about sex in the Middle Ages, it is useful to pause and think of what images pop up when one does.
An Analysis of Child Sexual Abuse During the Byzantine Empire
During the Byzantine Empire, child sexual abuse was more prevalent and less stigmatized than it is today.
On the Significance of Secrecy in the Medieval Arabic Romances
In this essay, I analyze the keeping and divulging of secrets as they relate to aspects of love and sexuality portrayed mainly in a selection of medieval Arabic romances known as the ‘Udhri love stories.
Nicolette : action transvestite, or, who and what is the heroine of Aucassin et Nicolette?
In this paper, I will show how Nicolette is constantly, deliberately, changing, in appearance and identity, from the beginning of the story, and how she is thus Izzard’s action transvestite.
The Depiction of Jews in the Carnival Plays and Comedies of Hans Folz and Hans Sachs in Early Modern Nuremberg
This study will thus demonstrate that the Bakhtinian model and its critics both contribute to our understanding of the Fastnachtspiel and the development of early modern German attitudes toward Jews.
The Fabulous Saga of Guðmundr inn ríki: Representation of Sexuality in Ljósvetninga saga
Guðmundr, a powerful goði living in the late 10th and early 11th century, was subjected to sexual insults by his rivals Þorkell hákr and Þórir goði Helgason. These sexual insults described him as effeminate and cowardly, and the thesis shows that the Ljósvetninga saga text follows suit with these slurs.
Caught in Love’s Grip: Passion and Moral Agency in French Courtly Romance
French royal courts in the late twelfth century were absolutely smitten with love. Troubadaours traveled from place to place reciting stories of knights and the ladies they wooed.
A figurine from Stare Bielsko. Sexuality in Middle Ages
ceramic figurine from late Middle Ages, found in Stare Bielsko, shows a couple that is having sex and can be a good example of not such sanctimonious way of thinking.
Kissing Cousins: Incest and Sex Change in Tristan de Nanteuil
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…
A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
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
BOOK REVIEW: A Triple Knot by Emma Campion I had the pleasure of reading another Emma Campion (Candace Robb) novel recently. Campion, who…
Medieval Mean Girls: On Sexual Rivalry and the Uses of Cosmetics in La Celestina
The prevalent use of cosmetics among women fast became a topic for moralist discourse, both inside and out of the Peninsula.
From the street to the brothel: following the go-between
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.
Man, woman or monster : some themes of female masculinity and transvestism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
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.
The Cross-dressing Women of Medieval London
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.