The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages

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Courtship was a family matter: the wealthy and titled wanted their children to marry into the same class but, even among the common folk, clan approval was vital. This is a VERY good overview on the topic for anyone interested in an introduction to medieval sex and sexuality. I especially recommend to any one attempting to understand the complex gender roles of the Middle Ages.

Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the topic and Harvey moves effortlessly round her varied sources. The medieval humoral system of medicine suggested that it was possible to die from having too much—or too little—sex, while the Roman Catholic Church taught that virginity was the ideal state. Thomas Filbin is a book critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Boston Sunday Globe, and Hudson Review.Like us, our forebears were troubled by sexual violence, but they also shared our tendency to handle it badly’.

Arts Remembrance: Jazz Notables We Lost in 2023 For many years now, the Francis Davis Jazz Poll has col. Nor can it explore why explicit sexual content was acceptable in some genres and almost completely absent from others, even when those genres were being used by the same audience, or whether the absence of sex in situations where we might expect it to occur means it wasn’t occurring, or it was taken for granted that the audience would understand what was happening.

parents arranged a marriage for her, she insisted that she intended to preserve her virginity for her heavenly spouse and cut off her nose with a sword. T he Irish Times ‘An entertaining but thoughtful study, descriptive without becoming didactic or pedantic. There are passionate stories and horrible ones but the infatuation with the Middle Ages as a period so far and almost subhuman compared to our own allows us the pleasure of not recognizing our own flaws: something Harvey forces us to confront.

Sex was something men did to women, preferably during marriage, though female pleasure was important because without it conception couldn’t occur. The obvious problem haunting such a discussion is how accurately the sex lives of ordinary people can ever be recovered. Really hope the author does more work for us general readers covering this period and its less well known subjects like Heresy etc. Her message is, depending on your perspective, reassuring: “then” is not all that different from “now” — when it comes to sex, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.Reading Katherine Harvey’s The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages, I found myself thinking: weird, weirder and, occasionally, whoa! Would recommend for anyone wanting some fun (please note not always fun - sometimes shocking, saddening and disturbing) historical reading. Today he might be considered bisexual, given his activity, but nonbinary, trans, or gender fluid as to his identity.