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Like a Virgin? The Medieval Origins of a Modern Debate
Katherine Harvey Although well-behaved women seldom make history, they do sometimes make the news. Over the past few days, numerous news outlets have reported on a new Vatican ruling concerning...
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Obscene Pedagogies: Transgressive Talk and Sexual Education in Late Medieval...
Carissa Harris As anyone who has read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales knows, Middle English literature is rife with sexually explicit language and situations. Less canonical works can be even more brazen in...
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Virgin Whore
Emma Maggie Solberg In Virgin Whore, Emma Maggie Solberg uncovers a surprisingly prevalent theme in late English medieval literature and culture: the celebration of the Virgin Mary’s sexuality....
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‘Behaviour Which Merits a Horrible and Wretched Death’: Sex, Sin and the...
Katherine Harvey In recent weeks, as fears about coronavirus have spread across the world, various explanations for the emergence of this new disease have been proposed with most of them focusing on...
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The Reputation of Edward II
Kit Heyam During his lifetime and the four centuries following his death, King Edward II (1307-1327) acquired a reputation for having engaged in sexual and romantic relationships with his male...
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The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal and the Medieval Clergy
Dyan Elliott In the fourth century, clerics began to distinguish themselves from members of the laity by virtue of their augmented claims to holiness. Because clerical celibacy was key to this...
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Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany
Jamie Page Prostitution played an important part in structuring gender relations in medieval Germany. Prostitutes were often viewed as an example of the extreme female sinfulness which all women risked...
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Divine, Demonic and Disordered: Women without Men in Song Dynasty China
Hsiao-wen Cheng Divine, Demonic and Disordered considers the phenomenon of the “manless woman”, as depicted in Chinese writings from the Song period (960-1279). These women were considered peculiar...
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‘Longer than a big man’s thigh’: The Perfect Penis in Medieval Europe
Katherine Harvey In an anonymously-authored late medieval English poem called ‘A Talk of Ten Wives on Their Husbands’ Ware’, a group of women gather in a tavern to grumble, in graphic detail, about...
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Between Byzantine Men
Mark Masterson The presence and importance of same-sex desire between men in the Byzantine Empire has been understudied. While John Boswell and others tried to open a conversation about desire between...
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