1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910463252503321

Autore

Amer Sahar

Titolo

Crossing borders [[electronic resource] ] : love between women in medieval French and Arabic literatures / / Sahar Amer

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2008

ISBN

0-8122-0108-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (265 p.)

Collana

The Middle Ages series

Disciplina

840.9/3526643

Soggetti

French literature - To 1500 - History and criticism

Arabic literature - History and criticism

Lesbians in literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [217]-238) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- CONTENTS -- NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION -- PREFACE -- CHAPTER ONE. Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries -- CHAPTER TWO. Crossing Linguistic Borders -- CHAPTER THREE. Crossing Sartorial Lines -- CHAPTER FOUR. Crossing the Lines of Friendship -- CHAPTER FIVE. Crossing Social and Cultural Borders -- CONCLUSION. Beyond Orientalist Presuppositions -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sommario/riassunto

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 piety.In 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 West.Amer'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.