Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages

Series editors: Denis Renevey and Diane Watt

Medieval Virginities

Edited by Anke Bernau, Sarah Salih and Ruth Evans

• Contents
• Series editors' preface
• Editorial Board

‘ . . . fascinating and scholarly volume, well presented. . . a must for all libraries.’ (Analecta Cartusiana)

‘One notable characteristic of this volume is its consistent engagement with key methodological and interpretative concerns. All of the essays show clear signs of participation in a coherent critical conversation; it is refreshing, and a credit to the editors, to see this degree of conceptual as well as topical coherence in a collection of essays.’ Modern Language Review

From Joan of Arc to Britney Spears, the figure of the virgin has been the subject of considerable scholarly and popular interest. Yet virginity itself is a paradoxical condition, both perfect and monstrous, present and absent, often visible only insofar as it is under threat.

Medieval Virginities traces some of the specific manifestations of virginity in late medieval culture. It shows how virginity is represented in medical, legal, hagiographical and historical texts, as well as how the seductive but dangerous figure of the virgin affects the aims and objectives of these texts. Because virginity is so often thought of as self-identical and ahistorical, Medieval Virginities aims to theorize and historicize its various manifestations and to demonstrate how representations and discussions of virginity continuously shift and change.

The variety of subjects and disciplines represented here testify both to the elusiveness of virginity and to its lasting appeal and importance. Medieval Virginities shows how virginity’s inherent ambiguity highlights the problems, contradictions and discontinuities lurking within medieval ideologies. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in questions of gender identity, conceptions of the body, subjectivity, truth and representation in medieval culture.

Anke Bernau is Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University. Sarah Salih is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of East Anglia. Ruth Evans is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Stirling.

Contents and Contributors:

• Sarah Salih, Anke Bernau and Ruth Evans Introduction: Virginities and Virginity Studies
• Sarah Salih When is a Bosom not a Bosom? Problems with ‘Erotic Mysticism’
• Juliette Dor The Sheela-naGig: An Incongruous Sign of Sexual Purity?
• Jane Cartwright Virginity and Chastity Tests in Medieval Welsh Prose
• Kim M. Phillips Four Virgins’ Tales: Sex and Power in Medieval Law
• John H. Arnold The Labour of Continence: Masculine Clerical Virginity
• Joanna Huntington Virginity in the Construction of Edward the Confessor as a Saint
• Jonathan Hughes Alchemy and the Exploration of Late Medieval Sexuality
• Ruth Evans The Jew, the Host and the Virgin Martyr: Fantasies of the Sentient Body
• Robert Mills Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?
• Anke Bernau ‘Saint, Witch, Man, Maid or Whore?’ Joan of Arc and Writing History
• Jocelyn Wogan-Browne Afterword.

SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages aims to explore the interface between medieval religion and culture, with as broad as possible an understanding of those terms. It puts to the forefront studies which engage with works that significantly contributed to the shaping of medieval culture. However, it also gives attention to studies dealing with works that reflect and highlight aspects of medieval culture that have been neglected in the past by scholars of the medieval disciplines. For example, devotional works and the practice they infer illuminate in remarkable ways our understanding of the medieval subject and its culture, while studies of the material space designed and inhabited by medieval subjects yields new evidence on the period and the people who shaped it and lived in it. In the larger field of religion and culture, we also want to explore further the roles played by women as authors, readers and owners of books, thereby defining them more precisely as actors in the cultural field.

The series as a whole investigates the European Middle Ages, from c.500 to c.1500. Our aim is to explore medieval religion and culture with the tools belonging to such disciplines as, among others, art history, philosophy, theology, history, musicology, the history of medicine, and literature. In particular, we would like to promote interdisciplinary studies, as we believe strongly that our modern understanding of the term applies fascinatingly well to a cultural period marked by a less tight confinement and categorization of its disciplines than the modern period. However, our only criterion is academic excellence, with the belief that the use of a large diversity of critical tools and theoretical approaches serves for a deeper understanding of medieval culture. We want the series to reflect this diversity, as we believe that, as a collection of outstanding contributions, it offers a more subtle representation of a period that is marked by paradoxes and contradictions and which necessarily reflects diversity and difference, however difficult it may sometimes have proved for medieval culture to accept these notions.

Series Editors
Denis Renevey (Universities of Fribourg and Geneva)
Diane Watt (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)