Crossing borders : love between women in medieval French and Arabic literatures / Sahar Amer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Amer, Sahar.

Series:

Middle Ages series.

The Middle Ages series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French literature--To 1500--History and criticism.

French literature.

Arabic literature--History and criticism.

Arabic literature.

Lesbians in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (265 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

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

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

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

ISBN:

9780812201086

0812201086

OCLC:

859161108