|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1. |
Record Nr. |
UNINA9910807143703321 |
|
|
Autore |
Burrus Virginia |
|
|
Titolo |
The sex lives of saints : an erotics of ancient hagiography / / Virginia Burrus |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pubbl/distr/stampa |
|
|
Philadelphia, Pa., : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2004 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ISBN |
|
1-283-21119-X |
9786613211194 |
0-8122-0072-1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Edizione |
[1st ed.] |
|
|
|
|
|
Descrizione fisica |
|
1 online resource (223 p.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Collana |
|
Divinations : rereading late ancient religion |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Disciplina |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Soggetti |
|
Sex - Religious aspects - Christianity - History of doctrines |
Christian hagiography - History - To 1500 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lingua di pubblicazione |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Formato |
Materiale a stampa |
|
|
|
|
|
Livello bibliografico |
Monografia |
|
|
|
|
|
Note generali |
|
First paperback edition 2008. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nota di bibliografia |
|
Includes bibliographical references (p. [199]-208) and index. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nota di contenuto |
|
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Hagiography and the History of Sexuality -- Chapter 1. Fancying Hermits: Sublimation and the Arts of Romance -- Chapter 2. Dying for a Life: Martyrdom, Masochism, and Female (Auto)Biography -- Chapter 3. Hybrid Desire: Empire, Sadism, and the Soldier Saint -- Chapter 4. Secrets of Seduction: The Lives of Holy Harlots -- Postscript (Catching My Breath) -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sommario/riassunto |
|
Has a repressive morality been the primary contribution of Christianity to the history of sexuality? The ascetic concerns that pervade ancient Christian texts would seem to support such a common assumption. Focusing on hagiographical literature, Virginia Burrus pursues a fresh path of interpretation, arguing that the early accounts of the lives of saints are not antierotic but rather convey a sublimely transgressive "countereroticism" that resists the marital, procreative ethic of sexuality found in other strands of Christian tradition.Without reducing the erotics of ancient hagiography to a single formula, The Sex Lives of Saints frames the broad historical, theological, and theoretical issues at stake in such a revisionist interpretation of ascetic eroticism, with particular reference to the work of Michel Foucault and Georges Bataille, David Halperin and Geoffrey Harpham, Leo Bersani and Jean |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Baudrillard. Burrus subsequently proceeds through close, performative readings of the earliest Lives of Saints, mostly dating to the late fourth and early fifth centuries-Jerome's Lives of Paul, Malchus, Hilarion, and Paula; Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina; Augustine's portrait of Monica; Sulpicius Severus's Life of Martin; and the slightly later Lives of so-called harlot saints. Queer, s/m, and postcolonial theories are among the contemporary discourses that prove intriguingly resonant with an ancient art of "saintly" loving that remains, in Burrus's reading, promisingly mobile, diverse, and open-ended. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |