The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process (New Middle Ages) [Hardcover]

Albrecht Classen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 2007 | ISBN-10: 1403975582 | ISBN-13: 978-1403975584 | Edition: First Edition

Conrad Kyeser was the first to present an image of a chastity belt in his illustrated book on war machinery, Bellifortis (1405), and some fifteenth- and sixteenth-century poets and artists referred to this object as well. Yet, there is no firm evidence that chastity belts were ever used in reality. By contrast, modern writers have often referred to the chastity belt as an object employed primarily in the Middle Ages in order to support a highly speculative perspective of past practices, maybe as a spurious legitimation for the use of chastity belts in the modern sex industry. Anthropologists, ethnologists, then also cultural historians, and feminist scholars have happily embraced the idea of the chastity belt because it provided them with an effective battle-cry to malign the medieval world and to project the benefits of the civilization process in the lives of modern women freed of being degrading by a chastity belt.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this huge project, Professor Classen has dared to tread on ground often shunned by many scholars and manages to make this book quite delightful in some of its surprising literary discoveries.  His research is thorough, his prose readable and enjoyable, the subject captivating."--Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching

 

“Classen's analysis of the mythology of the chastity belt is nothing short of brilliant. His dissection of the literary and iconographic evidence from the late Middle Ages to the twentieth century is exhaustive and highly illuminating. By surveying texts in a wide range of languages, he demonstrates the longevity of a mythic notion with no historical substance. In the process, he sheds profound light on the images about sexuality and purity in medieval literature and art, radically misunderstood in the modern period. This book is to be recommended to specialists in medieval and early modern culture as much as to those generally interested in the capacity of myths to shape and distort our understanding of sexual identity.”--Constant J. Mews, Monash University

"In this tour-de-force, Classen explodes the myth of the medieval chastity belt, but he also does more. He reveals how the myth came into existence and how it grew over time.  In doing so, he has written a witty and fascinating piece of intellectual and social history which transcends the boundary between the medieval and modern and is exemplary in its scholarship and balance."--William Chester Jordan, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University

 "What a delight! With humor, erudition, and a fine sense of history's changing mind-sets, Classen takes the reader on a wonderful and surprising journey into a realm where academics often fear to tread. Many a modern scholar may be a bit chagrined by Classen's research and results, but wholly captivated; and the medievalist will surely smile."--G. Ronald Murphy, SJ, Georgetown University
“The chastity belt is a bizarre product of the modern imagination, which tirelessly dreams up medieval weirdnesses. Classen's book is a riveting odyssey through the grand-guignol-visions and museum fabrications inspired by the idea of the chastity belt. Classen's research is superbly thorough, his prose readable, the subject endlessly interesting. This book reveals more about the modern imagination than medieval barbarity.”--C. Stephen Jaeger, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign

 

"Classen’s book is a great accomplishment. His argumentation demonstrates not only a profound knowledge of a large corpus of sources in multiple languages, but also a high methodological level of reflection. One can only hope that medieval scholarship will produce more studies like this one that in the best sense of the word serves scholarly enlightenment."--Wissenschaftlicher Literaturanzeiger

About the Author

Originating from Germany, Albrecht Classen is a medievalist in the Department of German Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He has published more than 40 scholarly monographs, editions, anthology, translations, and textbooks, and close to 400 scholarly articles. He is the editor of Tristania and co-editor of Mediaevistik. Currently Classen is preparing a new volume on Words of Love and Love of Words in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and he is editing a three-volume Handbook of Medieval Studies for de Gruyter. In 2004 he received the rank of University Distinguished Professor, and was also awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz am Band (Order of Merit), the highest award given to a civilian by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, in recognition of his contributions to the teaching and support of German culture, language, and literature.
 

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition edition (March 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403975582
• ISBN-13: 978-1403975584
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,559,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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