Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love

Portada
University of Chicago Press, 15 de febr. 2009 - 308 pàgines
Until now the advent of Western romantic love has been seen as a liberation from—or antidote to—ten centuries of misogyny. In this major contribution to gender studies, R. Howard Bloch demonstrates how similar the ubiquitous antifeminism of medieval times and the romantic idealization of woman actually are.

Through analyses of a broad range of patristic and medieval texts, Bloch explores the Christian construction of gender in which the flesh is feminized, the feminine is aestheticized, and aesthetics are condemned in theological terms. Tracing the underlying theme of virginity from the Church Fathers to the courtly poets, Bloch establishes the continuity between early Christian antifeminism and the idealization of woman that emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In conclusion he explains the likely social, economic, and legal causes for the seeming inversion of the terms of misogyny into those of an idealizing tradition of love that exists alongside its earlier avatar until the current era.

This startling study will be of great value to students of medieval literature as well as to historians of culture and gender.

Des de l'interior del llibre

Continguts

Introduction
1
ONE Molestiae Nuptiarum and the Yahwist Creation
13
TWO Early Christianity and the Estheticization of Gender
37
THREE Devils Gateway and Bride of Christ
65
FOUR The Poetics of Virginity
93
FIVE The Old French Lay and the Myriad Modes of Male Indiscretion
113
SIX The Love Lyric and the Paradox of Perfection
143
The Power of Women to Dispose
165
Notes
199
Bibliography
271
Index
291
Copyright

Altres edicions - Mostra-ho tot

Frases i termes més freqüents

Passatges populars

Pàgina 33 - Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
Pàgina 30 - Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church : and he is the saviour of the body.
Pàgina 84 - If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Pàgina 84 - He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.
Pàgina 40 - You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert - that is, death - even the Son of God had to die.
Pàgina 107 - Let Mary leave us, :"for women are not worthy of Life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself -^ male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Pàgina 23 - And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Pàgina 201 - They effected a change which has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched, and they erected impassable barriers between us and the classical past or the Oriental present. Compared with this revolution the Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.
Pàgina 84 - The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy, both in body and in spirit : but she that is married, careth for the»things of the world, how she may please her husband.

Informació bibliogràfica