The bedtrick : tales of sex and masquerade / Wendy Doniger.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Doniger, Wendy, author.

Series:

Worlds of desire.

Worlds of desire

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex.

Sex--Mythology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (631 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago, Illinois ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2000]

Summary:

"Somehow I woke up one day and found myself in bed with a stranger." Meant literally or figuratively, this statement describes one of the best-known plots in world mythology and popular storytelling. In a tour that runs from Shakespeare to Hollywood and from Abraham Lincoln to Casanova, the erudite and irrepressible Wendy Doniger shows us the variety, danger, and allure of the "bedtrick," or what it means to wake up with a stranger. The Bedtrick brings together hundreds of stories from all over the world, from the earliest recorded Hindu and Hebrew texts to the latest item in the Weekly World News, to show the hilariously convoluted sexual scrapes that people manage to get themselves into and out of. Here you will find wives who accidentally commit adultery with their own husbands. You will read Lincoln's truly terrible poem about a bedtrick. You will learn that in Hong Kong the film The Crying Game was retitled Oh No! My Girlfriend Has a Penis. And that President Clinton was not the first man to be identified by an idiosyncratic organ. At the bottom of these wonderful stories, ancient myths, and historical anecdotes lie the dynamics of sex and gender, power and identity. Why can't people tell the difference in the dark? Can love always tell the difference between one lover and another? And what kind of truth does sex tell? Funny, sexy, and engaging, The Bedtrick is a masterful work of energetic storytelling and dazzling scholarship. Give it to your spouse and your lover.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Preface: Why a Book about a Bedtrickf

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Sex, Text, and Masquerade

One: How to Commit Adultery with Your Own Spouse

Approach One: Philosophy, or Love/Sex = Mind/Body?

Two: The Rape of the False Mother

Approach Two: Psychology

Three: Wahing Up in Bed with an Animal

Approach Three: Zoology

Four: The Lovely/Loathly Lady

Approach Four: Feminism, or Women Are Good to Think With

Five: The Cuckolds of the Heart

Approach Five: Theology, or When God Has Lipstick on His Collar

Six: Designated Hitters

Approach Six: Law, or Loopholes in the Penal Code

Seven: Color, Class, and Clout

Approach Seven: Weapons of the Weak

Eight: Cross-Cultural Cross-Dressing

Approach Eight: Queer Theory and the Theater of Deception

Nine: Incest

Approach Nine: Sexual Rhetoric

Ten: Real Sex and Fantastic Sex

Approach Ten: Structuralism

Conclusion: Carnal Ignorance and Carnal Knowledge

Appendix: Bedtricks in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index

Notes

Bibliography

Filmography: Double Features: Bedtricks (and Related Plots) on Film

Index and Glossary.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Doniger, Wendy The Bedtrick

ISBN:

0-226-15644-3

OCLC:

1301797233