IMC 2009: Sessions
Session 1501: Pagans and Sexuality, I: Exemplars
Thursday 16 July 2009, 09.00-10.30
| Sponsor: | Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies, King's College London |
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| Organiser: | Sarah Salih, Department of English Language & Literature, King's College London |
| Moderator/Chair: | Josh Davies, Department of English Language & Literature, King's College London |
| Paper 1501-a | The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions: A Re-Examination of the Motives of Pagan Tormentors in Old English Female Virgin Martyr Legends (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Hagiography, Language and Literature - Old English, Sexuality |
| Paper 1501-b | Hrotsvit's Queer Pagans (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Sexuality |
| Paper 1501-c | Exemplary Chastity and the Medieval Lucretia (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Mentalities, Women's Studies |
| Abstract | The figure of the 'pagan' was a valuable repository for Christian doubts, questions, and anxieties about sexuality. These papers examine models of sexual virtue which arise from the confrontation with pagan sexual aggression, but do not discover a straightforward contrast between Christian virtue and pagan wickedness. Bailey studies the perverse desires of the martyrs of Old English hagiographic legends; Mills the interrelation of sexual, religious, and ethnic differences in Hrotsvit's hagiographies; Shutters the use of the pagan Lucretia as an eroticized exemplar of marital chastity. |