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Medieval virginity theory explored through study of martyrs, nuns and Margery Kempe. This study looks at the question of what it meant to be a virgin in the Middle Ages, and the forms which female virginity took. It begins with the assumptions that there is more to virginity than sexual inexperience, and that virginity may be considered as a gendered identity, a role which is performed rather than biologically determined. The author explores versions of virginity as they appear in medieval saints' lives, in the institutional chastity of nuns, and as shown in the book of Margery Kempe, showing how it can be active, contested, vulnerable but also recoverable. SARAH SALIH teaches in the Department of English at King's College London.
Although the theme of bloodied nuptial sheets seems pervasive in western culture, its association with female virginity is uniquely tied to a brief passage in the book of Deuteronomy detailing the procedure for verifying a young woman's purity; it seldom, if ever, appears outside of Abrahamic traditions. In Signs of Virginity, Michael Rosenberg examines the history of virginity testing in Judaism and early Christianity, and the relationship of these tests to a culture that encourages male sexual violence. Deuteronomy's violent vision of virginity has held sway in Jewish and Christian circles more or less ever since. However, Rosenberg points to two authors-the rabbinic collective that produc...
The essays in Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance examine the nexus of religious, political, economic, and aesthetic values that produce the Western European myth of virginity, and explore how those complex cultural forces animate, empower, discipline, disclose, mystify, and menace the virginal body. As the title suggests, the virgin can be seen alternately or even simultaneously as menaced or menacing. To chart the history of virginity as a steady, evolutionary progression from a religious ideal in the Middle Ages toward a more secularized or sovereign ideal in the Renaissance would obscure how unstable a concept chastity is in both periods. What this collection demonstrates is that medieval and early modern attitudes toward virginity are not general and evolutionary, but specific, changeable, and often conflicted.
Includes information on abstinence, abstinence focused sex education, African Americans, Asian Americans, birth control, born again virginity, chastity, coming out, conservative Christians, definitions of virginity loss, double standard, Latinos, Latinas, oral sex, race, ethnicity, rape, religion, secondary virginity, stigma, technical virginity, etc.
Witty and thought-provoking, 'Virgins' reveals virginity's changing cultural significance throughout its long history, and its enduring power in contemporary society.
Whether stud or dud, hot dish or cold fish, you're never the same after you first “do the deed.” But how wild, weird, or earth shattering was it for your neighbor, the person next to you on the bus, or your veterinarian? In How to Lose Your Virginity… and How Not To, compiled from 1,000 face-to-face interviews across North America, Shawn Wickens makes us transfixed voyeurs in scores of others' seminal “coming” of age moments. From Kelsie Testa in Jerk Magazine: "A compilation of shocking yet heartwarming tales of orifices, secretions, and vulgarity that pleasantly ends in an orgasm. From condom follies to mixed-race orgies, Wickens proves that no formula exists when it comes to thi...
Noting that though Christian thought has consistently held virginity to be purer than married life, a virgin woman has always queer been in social terms, Jankowsky (English, Washington State U.) explores the tensions behind the many representations of virgin women in English stage plays from 1590 to about 1670 and how those representations can be considered queer. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
From this book you can get information on the topic «What is virginity and who is called a virgin.» Many young ladies (and many guys too), judging by the frequent unclear explanations to this question, do not exactly imagine what virginity is, and when a girl is considered a virgin. Therefore, in order to deal with this once and for all, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the material of this text. Here there will be answers to most questions concerning this term.
We live in a cultural milieu in which it is no longer possible to have any confidence in external supports from society or the media to help one remain chaste - in the single state or in a life consecrated to God by vows. Today much depends on the strong personal motivations of the individual coupled with the grace of God and a heavy dose of common sense for one to live this lifestyle. Still it is not only possible to do so, but to do so with joy. This little book on celibacy and virginity for the sake of the Kingdom seeks to help create the kind of motivation necessary, drawing heavily on texts from the New Testament which address many of the problems and objections frequently leveled against the very idea of living chastely with the restraint, discipline and self-control required. Young people, for whom this book was mainly written, are shown how to live the charism of virginity and celibacy charismatically - that is "as a gift, in all humility, with joy and perfect freedom."
Women's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising, often nonanatomical ways. Eventually Christians took part in a cross-cultural shift toward viewing virginity as something that could be perceived in women's sex organs. Treating virginity as anatomical brought both benefits and costs. By charting this change and situating it in the larger landscape of ancient thought, Virgin Territory illuminates unrecognized differences among early Christian sources and historicizes problematic ideas about women's bodies that still persist today.