The way that we have perceived, described, and understood sexual desire has changed dramatically over time and across cultures. This collection brings together a group of experts from a variety of disciplines to explore the history of sexual desires and the transformation of sexual ideas, attitudes, and practices in premodern Europe. Among the topics considered are the visibility of sexual offenses and the construction of passions; the geographical range extends to Great Britain, with extended attention also to France as well as Northern and Eastern Europe. The result is a groundbreaking volume that adds significantly to our understanding of premodern European history, history of sexualities, gender studies, religious history, and many other fields.
- Cover
- Table of contents
- Editors’ foreword
- Satu Lidman, Tom Linkinen, Marjo Kaartinen, and Meri Heinonen
- Framing premodern desires between sexuality, sin, and crime: An introduction / Garthine Walker
- Part I – Transforming ideas and practices
- The naturalness of sex in medieval Roman law / Thomas Parry-Jones
- Desire after Foucault: A re-evaluation of sex and sin in English medieval pastoral manuals / Kathleen Smith
- Incest between in-laws: A matter of life and death in Sweden in 1700 / Bonnie Clementsson
- Dialectics of virginity: Controlling the morals of youth in the early modern Polish countryside / Tomasz Wiślicz
- The first sexual revolution / Faramerz Dabhoiwala
- Part II – Constructing passions
- Love and desire in French moralist discourse / Carin Franzén
- Between books and brothels: The sexual scholarship of Hadriaan Beverland (1650-1716) / Karen Hollewand
- The dream and the sin: Erotic dream in the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries / Juliette Lancel
- The lame man makes the best lecher: Sex, sin, and the disabled Renaissance body / Kaye McLelland
- Between passion and lust: Framing male desire in early modern Sweden / Jonas Liliequist
- Epilogue: What happens between the covers: Writing premodern desire for audiences beyond academia / Lois Leveen
- About the authors
- Index
- List of tables and pictures
- Table 1 – Incest prohibitions and penalties in Sweden in 1700
- Picture 1 – Peasant women from the environs of Jarosław: married woman wearing a bonnet and maidens in wreaths
- Picture 2 – Image of Sappho (female classical poet)
- Picture 3 – Arrangement of images
- Picture 4 – Portrait of Beverland by Ary de Vois (1670s)
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