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The Erotics of Grief : Emotions and the Construction of Privilege in the Medieval Mediterranean
Author
Title
The Erotics of Grief : Emotions and the Construction of Privilege in the Medieval Mediterranean / Megan Moore.
ISBN
9781501758416
Publication
Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2021]
Copyright Notice Date
©2021
Physical Description
1 online resource (204 p.) : 5 b&w halftones, 2 charts
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
Notes
In English.
Access and use
Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Summary
The Erotics of Grief considers how emotions propagate power by exploring whose lives are grieved and what kinds of grief are valuable within and eroticized by medieval narratives. Megan Moore argues that grief is not only routinely eroticized in medieval literature but that it is a foundational emotion of medieval elite culture. Focusing on the concept of grief as desire, Moore builds on the history of the emotions and Georges Bataille's theory of the erotic as the conflict between desire and death, one that perversely builds a sense of community organized around a desire for death. The link between desire and death serves as an affirmation of living communities. Moore incorporates literary, visual, and codicological evidence in sources from across the Mediterranean-from Old French chansons de geste, such as the Song of Roland and La Mort li roi Artu and romances such as Erec et Enide, Philomena, and Floire et Blancheflor; to Byzantine and Ancient Greek novels; to Middle English travel narratives such as Mandeville's Travels. In her reading of the performance of grief as a performance of community and remembrance, Moore assesses why some lives are imagined as mattering more than others and explores how a language of grief becomes a common language of status among the medieval Mediterranean elite.
Variant and related titles
De Gruyter University Press eBook pilot project 2021.
Format
Books / Online
Language
English
Added to Catalog
October 11, 2021
Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Desire and Death in Elite Medieval Emotional Communities
Chapter 1. Philomena and the Erotics of Privilege in the Middle Ages
Chapter 2. Widows and the Romance of Grief
Chapter 3. Masculinity, Mourning, and Epic Sacrifice
Chapter 4. Toward a Mediterranean Erotics of Grief
Conclusion: The Erotics of Grief and the Stakes of Community
Appendix 1: Selected Illuminations of Knights Being Grieved
Appendix 2. Selected Illuminations of Lovers in Death
Bibliography
Index
Subjects
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