Crossing Borders Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures The Middle Ages Series by Sahar Amer


Crossing Borders Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures The Middle Ages Series
Title : Crossing Borders Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures The Middle Ages Series
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 9780812240870
ISBN-10 : 9780812240870
Language : English
Format Type : Hardcover
Number of Pages : 252 pages

Given Christianity's valuation of celibacy and its persistent association of sexuality with the Fall and of women with sin Western medieval attitudes toward the erotic could not help but be vexed In contrast eroticism is explicitly celebrated in a large number of theological scientific and literary texts of the medieval Arab Islamicate tradition where sexuality was positioned at the very heart of religious pietyIn Crossing Borders Sahar Amer turns to the rich body of Arabic sexological writings to focus in particular on their open attitude toward erotic love between women By juxtaposing these Arabic texts with French works she reveals a medieval French literary discourse on same sex desire and sexual practices that has gone all but unnoticed The Arabic tradition on eroticism breaks through into French literary writings on gender and sexuality in often surprising ways she argues and she demonstrates how strategies of gender representation deployed in Arabic texts came to be models to imitate contest subvert and at times censor in the WestAmer's analysis reveals Western literary representations of gender in the Middle Ages as cross cultural hybrid discourses as she reexamines borders cultural linguistic historical geographic not as elements of separation and division but as fluid spaces of cultural exchange adaptation and collaboration Crossing these borders she salvages key Arabic and French writings on alternative sexual practices from oblivion to give voice to a group that has long been silenced

Crossing Borders Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures The Middle Ages Series Reviews

  • Heather Jones

    A collection of studies of texts featuring women’s relationships and especially erotic or romantic relationships in medieval literature with the added angle that the author is tracing connections and contrasts between Arabic and French texts There’s a growing body of literature in this general field and I tend to collect them One of these days I mean to put together an on line “sourcebook” of themes and motifs taken from both history and literature that could be useful or inspirational to modern authors writing fiction about lesbians in historic settings or historic inspired fantasy settings

  • The Unsafe Lorekeeper

    This well researched and well written book explores attitudes toward sexuality in the medieval Arab world and compare these with the moralizing and censorship that occurred once Arab literature began to be translated into European languages Particularly interesting is the assertion that in the medieval Arab world there was not a special word for bisexuality because it was considered the default behavior