Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages

Description

Essays exploring medieval castration, as reflected in archaeology, law, historical record, and literary motifs. Castration and castrati have always been facets of western culture, from myth and legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding harems to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century castrati singers. Metaphoric castration pervades a number of medieval literary genres, particularly the Old French fabliaux - exchanges of power predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified by genitalia - but the plain, literal act of castration and its implications are often overlooked. This collection explores this often taboo subject and its implications for cultural mores and custom in Western Europe, seeking to demystify and demythologize castration. Its subjects include archaeological studies of eunuchs; historical accounts of castration in trials of combat; the mutilation of political rivals in medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and Frisian legal and literary examples of castration as punishment; castration as comedy in the Old French fabliaux; the prohibition against genital mutilation in hagiography; and early-modern anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan stage. The introduction reflects on these topics in the context of arguably the most well-known victim of castration in the middle ages, Abelard. Introduction: A History of Calamities: The Culture of Castration - Larissa Tracy Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration - Kathryn Reusch The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs - Shaun Tougher Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol andPractice in Early Christianity - Jack Collins 'Al defouleden is holie bodi': Castration, the Sexualization ofTorture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary - Larissa Tracy The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served:Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law - Rolf H. Bremmer The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) LegalSubject - Jay Paul Gates 'Imbrued in their owne bloud': Castration in Early Welsh andIrish Sources - Charlene Eska Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Valueof Eunuchs - Mary A. Valante 'He took a stone away': Castration and Cruelty in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga - Anthony Adams The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinityand Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee - Mary E Leech Eunuchs of the Grail - Jed Chandler Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A Castration Motif inGuillaume de Lorris's Romans de la rose - Ellen Lorraine Friedrich Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Fèvre's La Vieille - Robert L. A. Clark The Dismemberment of Will: Early Modern Fear of Castration - Lena Wånggren and Karin Sellberg