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Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages Robert Mills

Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages By Robert Mills

Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages by Robert Mills


Summary

Challenging the view that ideas about sexual and gender dissidence were too confused to congeal into a coherent form in the Middle Ages, the author demonstrates that sodomy had a rich, multimedia presence in the period - and that a flexible approach to questions of terminology sheds new light on the many forms this presence took.

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Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages Summary

Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages by Robert Mills

During the Middle Ages in Europe, some sexual and gendered behaviors were labeled sodomitical or evoked the use of ambiguous phrases such as the unmentionable vice or the sin against nature. How, though, did these categories enter the field of vision? How do you know a sodomite when you see one? In Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages, Robert Mills explores the relationship between sodomy and motifs of vision and visibility in medieval culture, on the one hand, and those categories we today call gender and sexuality, on the other. Challenging the view that ideas about sexual and gender dissidence were too confused to congeal into a coherent form in the Middle Ages, Mills demonstrates that sodomy had a rich, multimedia presence in the period - and that a flexible approach to questions of terminology sheds new light on the many forms this presence took. Among the topics that Mills covers are depictions of the practices of sodomites in illuminated Bibles; motifs of gender transformation and sex change as envisioned by medieval artists and commentators on Ovid; sexual relations in religious houses and other enclosed spaces; and the applicability of modern categories such as transgender, butch and femme, or sexual orientation to medieval culture. Taking in a multitude of images, texts, and methodologies, this book will be of interest to all scholars, regardless of discipline, who engage with gender and sexuality in their work.

Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages Reviews

A tour de force of erudition, critical insight, and balanced judgment. Not since John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality has a single scholar working in gender and sexuality studies taken on such a vast array of data, genres, and languages and treated it with such wisdom and care. Mills is uniquely suited to the task: an art historian, a literary scholar, and a theoretical wizard, he combines like no one else in these three fields of expertise materials that he sees as complementary and essential to one another. (William Burgwinkle, University of Cambridge)

About Robert Mills

Robert Mills is a reader in medieval art at University College London. He is the author of Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture and coeditor of Rethinking Medieval Translation: Ethics, Politics, Theory. He lives in London.

Additional information

CIN022616912XG
9780226169125
022616912X
Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages by Robert Mills
Used - Good
Hardback
The University of Chicago Press
20150227
400
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

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