Ralph M. Leck
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040009
- eISBN:
- 9780252098185
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040009.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter examines the second European Renaissance: the reintroduction of Greek sexual philosophy into European cultural life. The pivot of this second Renaissance was the reintroduction of the ...
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This chapter examines the second European Renaissance: the reintroduction of Greek sexual philosophy into European cultural life. The pivot of this second Renaissance was the reintroduction of the Agape–Eros binary, particularly, the science of Agape, which revolutionized the study of sexuality. Sex was no longer merely an erotic or physiological matter best understood via natural science. The concept of Agape revealed that the study of sexuality must also be understood as a moral science. As Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison point out, scientific categories of analysis are not morally neutral. They carry within themselves prescriptive civic and moral codes. These codes can reproduce existing laws and dominant social patterns; or, as was the case with the reintroduction of agapeic science, a new lens of analysis can revolutionize science and social morality alike.Less
This chapter examines the second European Renaissance: the reintroduction of Greek sexual philosophy into European cultural life. The pivot of this second Renaissance was the reintroduction of the Agape–Eros binary, particularly, the science of Agape, which revolutionized the study of sexuality. Sex was no longer merely an erotic or physiological matter best understood via natural science. The concept of Agape revealed that the study of sexuality must also be understood as a moral science. As Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison point out, scientific categories of analysis are not morally neutral. They carry within themselves prescriptive civic and moral codes. These codes can reproduce existing laws and dominant social patterns; or, as was the case with the reintroduction of agapeic science, a new lens of analysis can revolutionize science and social morality alike.
Maureen Sabine
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251650
- eISBN:
- 9780823253043
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251650.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
In her vibrant screen performance as Sister Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary's, Ingrid Bergman represented the film nun as a mature modern woman who had chosen the religious life with a “complete ...
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In her vibrant screen performance as Sister Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary's, Ingrid Bergman represented the film nun as a mature modern woman who had chosen the religious life with a “complete understanding” of both erotic and spiritual desire. How did this engaging character and her cinematic sisters in later postwar popular film come to be stereotyped as girlish, incomplete, or unimportant characters± Veiled Desires explores this question through a unique, full-length study of nun films over a sixty year period beginning with the 1945 film The Bells of St. Mary's and concluding with Doubt in 2008. It argues for a more complex picture of the film nun as an ardent and active lead character who struggled with a problematic dual identity as a modern women and a religious over the course of the twentieth century. It suggests how beautiful and charismatic Hollywood stars such as Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus (1947) and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Joan Collins in Sea Wife (1957), Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story (1959), Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965), Diana Rigg in In This House of Brede (1975), and Meg Tilly in Agnes of God (1985) called attention to the desires that the veil concealed and the vows of chastity and obedience were thought to repress. In an historically framed and theologically and psychoanalytically informed argument, the book recuperates nun films as a significant genre in Anglo-American cinema. It shows in-depth how they probed the tensions between the selfless and sacrificial desires idealized in religious life as agape and the passionate and aspirational desires valorized in feminist discourse as eros.Less
In her vibrant screen performance as Sister Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary's, Ingrid Bergman represented the film nun as a mature modern woman who had chosen the religious life with a “complete understanding” of both erotic and spiritual desire. How did this engaging character and her cinematic sisters in later postwar popular film come to be stereotyped as girlish, incomplete, or unimportant characters± Veiled Desires explores this question through a unique, full-length study of nun films over a sixty year period beginning with the 1945 film The Bells of St. Mary's and concluding with Doubt in 2008. It argues for a more complex picture of the film nun as an ardent and active lead character who struggled with a problematic dual identity as a modern women and a religious over the course of the twentieth century. It suggests how beautiful and charismatic Hollywood stars such as Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus (1947) and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Joan Collins in Sea Wife (1957), Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story (1959), Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965), Diana Rigg in In This House of Brede (1975), and Meg Tilly in Agnes of God (1985) called attention to the desires that the veil concealed and the vows of chastity and obedience were thought to repress. In an historically framed and theologically and psychoanalytically informed argument, the book recuperates nun films as a significant genre in Anglo-American cinema. It shows in-depth how they probed the tensions between the selfless and sacrificial desires idealized in religious life as agape and the passionate and aspirational desires valorized in feminist discourse as eros.
Maureen Sabine
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251650
- eISBN:
- 9780823253043
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251650.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
Chapter 1 interrogates the traditional view of nuns as paragons of agape which opens The Bells of St. Mary's. “In the eyes of the world very few even take notice of us, but earthly honors and rewards ...
More
Chapter 1 interrogates the traditional view of nuns as paragons of agape which opens The Bells of St. Mary's. “In the eyes of the world very few even take notice of us, but earthly honors and rewards are not for you.” It considers the representational problem this statement posed – how attractive actresses were to play self-effacing nuns – by tracing Ingrid Bergman's evolving portraits of dedicated service to others in Casablanca, The Bell's of St. Mary's, and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. It argues that Bergman deployed an ardent film persona fusing erotic energy and spiritual incandescence to flesh out the full humanity of her women/ religious characters.Less
Chapter 1 interrogates the traditional view of nuns as paragons of agape which opens The Bells of St. Mary's. “In the eyes of the world very few even take notice of us, but earthly honors and rewards are not for you.” It considers the representational problem this statement posed – how attractive actresses were to play self-effacing nuns – by tracing Ingrid Bergman's evolving portraits of dedicated service to others in Casablanca, The Bell's of St. Mary's, and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. It argues that Bergman deployed an ardent film persona fusing erotic energy and spiritual incandescence to flesh out the full humanity of her women/ religious characters.
