1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910813051403321

Autore

Lochrie Karma

Titolo

Covert operations : the medieval uses of secrecy / / Karma Lochrie

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, : University of Pennsylvania Press, c1999

ISBN

1-283-89711-3

0-8122-0719-X

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (299 p.)

Collana

The Middle Ages Series

Middle Ages series

Disciplina

820.9/001

Soggetti

English literature - Middle English, 1100-1500 - History and criticism

Women and literature - England - History - To 1500

Women - England - History - Middle Ages, 500-1500

Marriage customs and rites, Medieval

Science, Medieval, in literature

Law, Medieval, in literature

Marriage in literature

Secrecy in literature

Gossip in literature

Sodomy in literature

England Social conditions 1066-1485

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. [229]-286) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction, or Dark Matter -- 1. Tongues Untied: Confession and Its Secrets -- 2. Tongues Wagging: Gossip, Women, and Indiscreet Secrets -- 3. Men's Ways of Knowing: The Secret of Secrets and the Secrets of Women -- 4. Covert Women and Their Mysteries -- 5. Sodomy and Other Female Perversions -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic BookIn Covert Operations, Karma Lochrie brings the categories and cultural meanings of secrecy in the Middle Ages out into the open. Isolating five broad areas—confession, women's gossip, medieval science and medicine, marriage and the law, and sodomitic discourse—Lochrie



examines various types of secrecy and the literary texts in which they are played out. She reads texts as central to Middle English studies as the "Parson's Tale," the "Miller's Tale," the Secretum Secretorum, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as well as a broad range of less familiar works, including a gynecological treatise and a little-known fifteenth-century parody in which gossip and confession become one. As she does so she reveals a great deal about the medieval past—and perhaps just as much about the early development of the concealments that shape the present day.