Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Trials and Joys of Marriage PB

Trials and Joys of Marriage PB

Salisbury, Eve

Paperback

Series: Teams Middle English Texts

Literary CriticismFiction AnthologiesGeneral Poetry

ISBN10: 1580440355
ISBN13: 9781580440356
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Published: May 1 2002
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.30
Height: 0.70 Width: 6.90 Depth: 9.90
Language: English
This edition collects twenty-four disparate Middle English texts, published between the late-thirteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, which all center around the theme of marriage. Eve Salisbury organizes them into three sections: satire and fabliaux, didactic prose and exempla, and secular lyrics. While a fabliau like Dame Sirith presents traditionally lusty lovers aided by trickery, others like A Talk of Ten Wives on Their Husbands' Ware--in which a group of married women complain about their husbands' lack of sexual skill--suggest more subversive viewpoints. Didactic texts enshrine orthodox, sometimes explicitly misogynist, attitudes about marriage; these include excerpts from the popular Gesta Romanorum, a Wycliffite sermon, and treatises on educating children. Secular lyrics move into the realm of comic and carnivalesque song, where conventional stereotypes of women and men could be overturned without threatening the status quo. Proto-feminist ideals such as consent between spouses, the value of domestic labor, and female sexuality are all explored throughout.

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