Tony K. Stewart
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195392722
- eISBN:
- 9780199777327
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392722.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
Caitanya was recognized among Vaiṣṇavas of Nadīyā as Gaura, Golden One. Locana Dāsa’s Caitanya maṅgala told how devotees developed an overt affection labeled gaura nāgara bhāva, while local poets ...
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Caitanya was recognized among Vaiṣṇavas of Nadīyā as Gaura, Golden One. Locana Dāsa’s Caitanya maṅgala told how devotees developed an overt affection labeled gaura nāgara bhāva, while local poets elaborated how women desired to become his erotic favorite, the devotional mood called nadīyā nāgarī bhāva. Gaura’s most intimate companion, Gadādhara, was eulogized as Gaura’s śakti, Rādhā. This eroticism depicted Gaura as the new Kṛṣṇa with his second wife Viṣṇupriyā, while others viewed him from the standpoint of a sakhī, companion to Rādhā. Vṛndāvana Dāsa’s Caitanya bhāgavata decried such perspectives for their potential excess in practice, but it was Caitanya’s own experience as Rādhā—depicted in Kavikarṇapūra’s Caitanyacandrodaya nāṭaka and Kṛṣṇadāsa’s Caitanya caritāmṛta—that eventually grounded all theology. Following aesthetician Svarūpa Dāmodara, Kṛṣṇadāsa reported Caitanya’s divine androgyny; in a celebrated conversation with Rāmānanda Rāya, Caitanya revealed himself to be overtly Kṛṣṇa, covertly Rādhā, descended so Kṛṣṇa could taste for himself Rādhā’s love.Less
Caitanya was recognized among Vaiṣṇavas of Nadīyā as Gaura, Golden One. Locana Dāsa’s Caitanya maṅgala told how devotees developed an overt affection labeled gaura nāgara bhāva, while local poets elaborated how women desired to become his erotic favorite, the devotional mood called nadīyā nāgarī bhāva. Gaura’s most intimate companion, Gadādhara, was eulogized as Gaura’s śakti, Rādhā. This eroticism depicted Gaura as the new Kṛṣṇa with his second wife Viṣṇupriyā, while others viewed him from the standpoint of a sakhī, companion to Rādhā. Vṛndāvana Dāsa’s Caitanya bhāgavata decried such perspectives for their potential excess in practice, but it was Caitanya’s own experience as Rādhā—depicted in Kavikarṇapūra’s Caitanyacandrodaya nāṭaka and Kṛṣṇadāsa’s Caitanya caritāmṛta—that eventually grounded all theology. Following aesthetician Svarūpa Dāmodara, Kṛṣṇadāsa reported Caitanya’s divine androgyny; in a celebrated conversation with Rāmānanda Rāya, Caitanya revealed himself to be overtly Kṛṣṇa, covertly Rādhā, descended so Kṛṣṇa could taste for himself Rādhā’s love.
Adam G. Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546626
- eISBN:
- 9780191720208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546626.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Pornography cultivates a cult of the flesh in which sex and the flesh are abstracted, etherealized, and finally destroyed. De Sade's vision of unlimited lust gives way to a pornocracy in which ...
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Pornography cultivates a cult of the flesh in which sex and the flesh are abstracted, etherealized, and finally destroyed. De Sade's vision of unlimited lust gives way to a pornocracy in which violence against the flesh is normalized, since pornography directly impacts the perception of the body, persons, and their sexual value, objectifying them as items for manipulation and consumption. A redemptive moral pedagogy will be sensitive to the proclivity of the sexual affections for disorder, yet unstintingly cultivate chastity as the healing force for shame and shamelessness.Less
Pornography cultivates a cult of the flesh in which sex and the flesh are abstracted, etherealized, and finally destroyed. De Sade's vision of unlimited lust gives way to a pornocracy in which violence against the flesh is normalized, since pornography directly impacts the perception of the body, persons, and their sexual value, objectifying them as items for manipulation and consumption. A redemptive moral pedagogy will be sensitive to the proclivity of the sexual affections for disorder, yet unstintingly cultivate chastity as the healing force for shame and shamelessness.
Robert C. Fuller
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195369175
- eISBN:
- 9780199871186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369175.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Sexuality represents a powerful life force within us, constituting our body's grand biological imperative. It should not surprise us, then, that our erotic energies often flow naturally into ...
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Sexuality represents a powerful life force within us, constituting our body's grand biological imperative. It should not surprise us, then, that our erotic energies often flow naturally into religious creativity. Recent research on the genetic basis of human sexuality identifies three separate programs responsible for lust, romantic love, and long‐term attachment. Religion, it seems, piggy‐backs on our threefold erotic desires. Eroticism thus plays an important role in luring individuals toward seeking union with attractive deities, forging devotional ties to a chosen lord, and forming long‐lasting commitments to the cultural codes thought to emanate from this beloved god. It is for this reason that sexuality is a uniquely powerful site for religious innovation, as can be seen in the sexually charged histories of several nineteenth‐century sectarian movements such as the Latter‐day Saints and the hundred‐year heritage of American Tantrism.Less
Sexuality represents a powerful life force within us, constituting our body's grand biological imperative. It should not surprise us, then, that our erotic energies often flow naturally into religious creativity. Recent research on the genetic basis of human sexuality identifies three separate programs responsible for lust, romantic love, and long‐term attachment. Religion, it seems, piggy‐backs on our threefold erotic desires. Eroticism thus plays an important role in luring individuals toward seeking union with attractive deities, forging devotional ties to a chosen lord, and forming long‐lasting commitments to the cultural codes thought to emanate from this beloved god. It is for this reason that sexuality is a uniquely powerful site for religious innovation, as can be seen in the sexually charged histories of several nineteenth‐century sectarian movements such as the Latter‐day Saints and the hundred‐year heritage of American Tantrism.
John Casey
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195092950
- eISBN:
- 9780199869732
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195092950.003.0015
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
The English speculated in an empirical way about heaven (as they had done about hell) in the seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries. Isaac Watts envisaged what was virtually a Royal Society of ...
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The English speculated in an empirical way about heaven (as they had done about hell) in the seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries. Isaac Watts envisaged what was virtually a Royal Society of intellectual speculation in heaven. Other thinkers discussed at length what avocations and travels would keep the saved occupied throughout eternity. The relation between our original bodies and the risen version was often discussed, with surprising results. Some—the “mortalists”—denied that the body could be immortal. One of the most striking speculative projects—Thomas Burnet's A Sacred Theory of the Earth, which explains what will happen after the General Resurrection—is described. There was also a heaven of sentimental eroticism, and a suggestion that we need not die at all.Less
The English speculated in an empirical way about heaven (as they had done about hell) in the seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries. Isaac Watts envisaged what was virtually a Royal Society of intellectual speculation in heaven. Other thinkers discussed at length what avocations and travels would keep the saved occupied throughout eternity. The relation between our original bodies and the risen version was often discussed, with surprising results. Some—the “mortalists”—denied that the body could be immortal. One of the most striking speculative projects—Thomas Burnet's A Sacred Theory of the Earth, which explains what will happen after the General Resurrection—is described. There was also a heaven of sentimental eroticism, and a suggestion that we need not die at all.
Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823226351
- eISBN:
- 9780823236718
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823226351.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
What does theology have to say about the place of eroticism in the salvific transformation of men and women, even of the cosmos itself? How, in turn, does eros infuse theological ...
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What does theology have to say about the place of eroticism in the salvific transformation of men and women, even of the cosmos itself? How, in turn, does eros infuse theological practice and transfigure doctrinal tropes? Avoiding the well-worn path of sexual moralizing while also departing decisively from Anders Nygren's influential insistence that Christian agape must have nothing to do with worldly eros, this book explores what is still largely uncharted territory in the realm of theological erotics. The ascetic, the mystical, the seductive, and the ecstatic—these are the places where the divine and the erotic may be seen to converge and love and desire to commingle. The book seeks new openings for the emergence of desire, love, and pleasure, while challenging common understandings of these terms. It engages risk at the point where the hope for salvation paradoxically endangers the safety of subjects—in particular, of theological subjects—by opening them to those transgressions of eros in which boundaries, once exceeded, become places of emerging possibility. The eighteen chapters, arranged in thematic clusters, move fluidly among and between premodern and postmodern textual traditions—from Plato to Emerson, Augustine to Kristeva, Mechthild to Mattoso, the Shulammite to Molly Bloom, the Zohar to the Da Vinci Code. In so doing, they link the sublime reaches of theory with the gritty realities of politics, the boundless transcendence of God with the poignant transience of materiality.Less
What does theology have to say about the place of eroticism in the salvific transformation of men and women, even of the cosmos itself? How, in turn, does eros infuse theological practice and transfigure doctrinal tropes? Avoiding the well-worn path of sexual moralizing while also departing decisively from Anders Nygren's influential insistence that Christian agape must have nothing to do with worldly eros, this book explores what is still largely uncharted territory in the realm of theological erotics. The ascetic, the mystical, the seductive, and the ecstatic—these are the places where the divine and the erotic may be seen to converge and love and desire to commingle. The book seeks new openings for the emergence of desire, love, and pleasure, while challenging common understandings of these terms. It engages risk at the point where the hope for salvation paradoxically endangers the safety of subjects—in particular, of theological subjects—by opening them to those transgressions of eros in which boundaries, once exceeded, become places of emerging possibility. The eighteen chapters, arranged in thematic clusters, move fluidly among and between premodern and postmodern textual traditions—from Plato to Emerson, Augustine to Kristeva, Mechthild to Mattoso, the Shulammite to Molly Bloom, the Zohar to the Da Vinci Code. In so doing, they link the sublime reaches of theory with the gritty realities of politics, the boundless transcendence of God with the poignant transience of materiality.
Frank Graziano
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195136401
- eISBN:
- 9780199835164
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195136403.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
An analysis of what mysticism might mean if its underlying presumptions–that God desires suffering, that mystics marry Christ–are false. Also explores trends in the scholarship on female mysticism, ...
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An analysis of what mysticism might mean if its underlying presumptions–that God desires suffering, that mystics marry Christ–are false. Also explores trends in the scholarship on female mysticism, including a devaluation or dismissal of erotic and psychological aspects. The concluding section treats the inversions of values and meanings in mysticism, then surveys perceptions regarding whether saints’ mortification is for imitation or wondrous admiration.Less
An analysis of what mysticism might mean if its underlying presumptions–that God desires suffering, that mystics marry Christ–are false. Also explores trends in the scholarship on female mysticism, including a devaluation or dismissal of erotic and psychological aspects. The concluding section treats the inversions of values and meanings in mysticism, then surveys perceptions regarding whether saints’ mortification is for imitation or wondrous admiration.
Vincent Azoulay
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691154596
- eISBN:
- 9781400851171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691154596.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
This chapter examines two contradictory aspects of eros in Pericles' life. In the Greek world, eros did not correspond to any romantic sentiment, nor did it bear any similarity to the wishy-washy ...
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This chapter examines two contradictory aspects of eros in Pericles' life. In the Greek world, eros did not correspond to any romantic sentiment, nor did it bear any similarity to the wishy-washy notion nowadays conjured up by “love.” Whether homosexual or heterosexual, eros was first and foremost a connective force or, at times, a disconnective one. As a connective force, eros linked individuals together. As a force for disconnection, it was capable of turning the normal functioning of social life upside down. The chapter explains how Pericles' life combined eros's power of connection and disconnection. It shows that Pericles was an ardent defender of a veritable civic eroticism and that his story testifies to the subversive power of eros. It also considers the erotic dimension of Pericles' authority, his behavior in matters of sexual love, and his relationship with Aspasia.Less
This chapter examines two contradictory aspects of eros in Pericles' life. In the Greek world, eros did not correspond to any romantic sentiment, nor did it bear any similarity to the wishy-washy notion nowadays conjured up by “love.” Whether homosexual or heterosexual, eros was first and foremost a connective force or, at times, a disconnective one. As a connective force, eros linked individuals together. As a force for disconnection, it was capable of turning the normal functioning of social life upside down. The chapter explains how Pericles' life combined eros's power of connection and disconnection. It shows that Pericles was an ardent defender of a veritable civic eroticism and that his story testifies to the subversive power of eros. It also considers the erotic dimension of Pericles' authority, his behavior in matters of sexual love, and his relationship with Aspasia.
Adrienne D. Davis and BSE Collective (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042645
- eISBN:
- 9780252051494
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042645.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
This book is a compilation of contemporary and previously unpublished scholarship on Black sexualities. The sixteen essays work to untangle the complex mechanisms of dominance and subordination as ...
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This book is a compilation of contemporary and previously unpublished scholarship on Black sexualities. The sixteen essays work to untangle the complex mechanisms of dominance and subordination as they are attached to political and socioeconomic forces, cultural productions, and academic lenses that assess sexuality as it intersects with race. Some of the essays trace the historical and contemporary markets for sexual labor and systems of erotic capital. Other essays illuminate how forces of commodification, exploitation, and appropriation, which render black sexualities both desirable and deviant, also provide the spaces, networks, and relationships that have allowed black people to revise, recuperate, and re-articulate their sexual identities, erotic capital, and gender and sexual expressions and relations. The collection focuses on three themes linked by the major theory of black sexual economy: sex labor and race play; drag and hypersexual performance; and the erotics of life and death.Less
This book is a compilation of contemporary and previously unpublished scholarship on Black sexualities. The sixteen essays work to untangle the complex mechanisms of dominance and subordination as they are attached to political and socioeconomic forces, cultural productions, and academic lenses that assess sexuality as it intersects with race. Some of the essays trace the historical and contemporary markets for sexual labor and systems of erotic capital. Other essays illuminate how forces of commodification, exploitation, and appropriation, which render black sexualities both desirable and deviant, also provide the spaces, networks, and relationships that have allowed black people to revise, recuperate, and re-articulate their sexual identities, erotic capital, and gender and sexual expressions and relations. The collection focuses on three themes linked by the major theory of black sexual economy: sex labor and race play; drag and hypersexual performance; and the erotics of life and death.
Kim Haines-Eitzen
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195171297
- eISBN:
- 9780199918140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171297.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles use a particularly charged erotic language in the service of an ascetic message. Scholars have long found commonalities between these early Christian “novels” and ...
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The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles use a particularly charged erotic language in the service of an ascetic message. Scholars have long found commonalities between these early Christian “novels” and their Greco-Roman counterparts, but central to all the early Christian “romances” is asceticism and celibacy. What is striking—and the subject of this chapter—is that at the very moment when erotic language comes to the fore of the Apocryphal Acts, scribes appear to have modified these texts to remove or modify the erotic language. One important motif is that of “women becoming men”; this chapter suggests that this motif likewise came to be contested in the process of copying.Less
The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles use a particularly charged erotic language in the service of an ascetic message. Scholars have long found commonalities between these early Christian “novels” and their Greco-Roman counterparts, but central to all the early Christian “romances” is asceticism and celibacy. What is striking—and the subject of this chapter—is that at the very moment when erotic language comes to the fore of the Apocryphal Acts, scribes appear to have modified these texts to remove or modify the erotic language. One important motif is that of “women becoming men”; this chapter suggests that this motif likewise came to be contested in the process of copying.
Ana Carden‐Coyne
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546466
- eISBN:
- 9780191720659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546466.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The story of the First World War is usually about suffering and traumatic memories. This introductory chapter sets out the main themes of the book, exploring the ways in which people recovered from ...
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The story of the First World War is usually about suffering and traumatic memories. This introductory chapter sets out the main themes of the book, exploring the ways in which people recovered from war — and how ideals of beauty, sexual liberation, and human resilience supported social, medical, and cultural imagery that renewed faith in humanity. By rebuilding the body through the classical imaginary and the erotic expression of modern life, western civilization would be reconstructed.Less
The story of the First World War is usually about suffering and traumatic memories. This introductory chapter sets out the main themes of the book, exploring the ways in which people recovered from war — and how ideals of beauty, sexual liberation, and human resilience supported social, medical, and cultural imagery that renewed faith in humanity. By rebuilding the body through the classical imaginary and the erotic expression of modern life, western civilization would be reconstructed.
Ana Carden‐Coyne
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546466
- eISBN:
- 9780191720659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546466.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter focuses on the performance of female bodies in the classical revival dance movement. It explores the discourse of physical liberation through fitness and beauty, and how that worked ...
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This chapter focuses on the performance of female bodies in the classical revival dance movement. It explores the discourse of physical liberation through fitness and beauty, and how that worked alongside notions of heterosexual orthodoxy and maternal fitness. First, it discusses the diversity and modernity of dancing in the Anglophone world, and places it within the wider international context. Second, it explores how dancers responded to the war and the social changes disrupting the sex/gender order. Third, the celebration of peace is considered as a physical sensation translated into movement. Exploring the theme of ‘the winged ideal’, the symbolic meaning of female flight through the air is discussed. Flight was seen as an enactment of women's freedom and success, but it also restated the goals of femininity in a period when gender boundaries were being renegotiated.Less
This chapter focuses on the performance of female bodies in the classical revival dance movement. It explores the discourse of physical liberation through fitness and beauty, and how that worked alongside notions of heterosexual orthodoxy and maternal fitness. First, it discusses the diversity and modernity of dancing in the Anglophone world, and places it within the wider international context. Second, it explores how dancers responded to the war and the social changes disrupting the sex/gender order. Third, the celebration of peace is considered as a physical sensation translated into movement. Exploring the theme of ‘the winged ideal’, the symbolic meaning of female flight through the air is discussed. Flight was seen as an enactment of women's freedom and success, but it also restated the goals of femininity in a period when gender boundaries were being renegotiated.
Timothy Chesters
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199599806
- eISBN:
- 9780191723537
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599806.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, European Literature
This chapter considers another possibility raised by return in the body: sexual congress with the dead. The first section examines the very limited corpus of ghost narratives in which divinely ...
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This chapter considers another possibility raised by return in the body: sexual congress with the dead. The first section examines the very limited corpus of ghost narratives in which divinely sanctioned apparitions are imbued with material form: these ‘resurrections’ are mainly played out in Middle Eastern contexts, their purpose the conversion of the Turk. The next section examines cases in which demons take up bodies. Set under the mythological banner of Orpheus and Eurydice, these stories frequently involve an eroticised return of a woman to her lover, with sex contact between them the prelude to a catastrophic, second loss. Having explored two examples in Le Loyer and François de Rosset, the chapter ends with a pamphlet in which the roles are reversed, and an embodied husband returns to his widow. This story, which bears certain similarities with the return of Martin Guerre, exploits to the full the titillating charge of revenant lovers.Less
This chapter considers another possibility raised by return in the body: sexual congress with the dead. The first section examines the very limited corpus of ghost narratives in which divinely sanctioned apparitions are imbued with material form: these ‘resurrections’ are mainly played out in Middle Eastern contexts, their purpose the conversion of the Turk. The next section examines cases in which demons take up bodies. Set under the mythological banner of Orpheus and Eurydice, these stories frequently involve an eroticised return of a woman to her lover, with sex contact between them the prelude to a catastrophic, second loss. Having explored two examples in Le Loyer and François de Rosset, the chapter ends with a pamphlet in which the roles are reversed, and an embodied husband returns to his widow. This story, which bears certain similarities with the return of Martin Guerre, exploits to the full the titillating charge of revenant lovers.
Richard Parish
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199596669
- eISBN:
- 9780191729126
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199596669.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History
The second chapter moves on to the central Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. It considers the role of Judaism in Christian apologetics, and examines the specifics of Christ’s life, looking in ...
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The second chapter moves on to the central Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. It considers the role of Judaism in Christian apologetics, and examines the specifics of Christ’s life, looking in that context at devotion to St Joseph and to the Virgin Mary; at the image of the spouse in its more and less orthodox formulations, with particular reference to the element of spiritual eroticism in the autobiography of St Margaret Mary; and at modes of devotional association with the Passion, notably in the sonnets of La Ceppède. It continues by considering the portrayal of early martyrs in contemporary tragedies (by Rotrou and Pierre Corneille); and concludes by assessing the impact of teaching surrounding sacraments and relics.Less
The second chapter moves on to the central Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. It considers the role of Judaism in Christian apologetics, and examines the specifics of Christ’s life, looking in that context at devotion to St Joseph and to the Virgin Mary; at the image of the spouse in its more and less orthodox formulations, with particular reference to the element of spiritual eroticism in the autobiography of St Margaret Mary; and at modes of devotional association with the Passion, notably in the sonnets of La Ceppède. It continues by considering the portrayal of early martyrs in contemporary tragedies (by Rotrou and Pierre Corneille); and concludes by assessing the impact of teaching surrounding sacraments and relics.
Elliot R. Wolfson
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195137279
- eISBN:
- 9780199849482
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195137279.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
The ascetic impulse manifested in pious devotion may be rooted in erotic desire, which is a recurring element in the phenomenology of religious experience. Matters pertaining to the sacred can be ...
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The ascetic impulse manifested in pious devotion may be rooted in erotic desire, which is a recurring element in the phenomenology of religious experience. Matters pertaining to the sacred can be depicted erotically because there is a presumption with respect to the sacred nature of the erotic. In the medieval setting of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, this is enhanced by the common Platonic heritage according to which the intelligible realm is itself rendered in distinctively erotic language. The confluence of eroticism and asceticism is especially prevalent in the realm of mystical religious experience. A central (if not defining) feature of mysticism cultivated within theistic traditions is the experience of communion of the individual soul with the personal God. This chapter explores asceticism and eroticism in medieval Jewish philosophical and mystical exegesis of the Song of Songs. It discusses the allegorization of the erotic in medieval Jewish exegesis, the ecstatic and theosophic elements in kabbalistic allegoresis, the elevation of the Shekhinah and the transposition of gender, and spiritual eroticism and ascetic renunciation in kabbalistic readings of the Song.Less
The ascetic impulse manifested in pious devotion may be rooted in erotic desire, which is a recurring element in the phenomenology of religious experience. Matters pertaining to the sacred can be depicted erotically because there is a presumption with respect to the sacred nature of the erotic. In the medieval setting of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, this is enhanced by the common Platonic heritage according to which the intelligible realm is itself rendered in distinctively erotic language. The confluence of eroticism and asceticism is especially prevalent in the realm of mystical religious experience. A central (if not defining) feature of mysticism cultivated within theistic traditions is the experience of communion of the individual soul with the personal God. This chapter explores asceticism and eroticism in medieval Jewish philosophical and mystical exegesis of the Song of Songs. It discusses the allegorization of the erotic in medieval Jewish exegesis, the ecstatic and theosophic elements in kabbalistic allegoresis, the elevation of the Shekhinah and the transposition of gender, and spiritual eroticism and ascetic renunciation in kabbalistic readings of the Song.
Jeffrey J. Kripal
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199751198
- eISBN:
- 9780199918782
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751198.003.0017
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter proceeds from the assumption that the direct personal experiences of the students inevitably constitute either the unspoken subtext or the creative context of a class on mysticism. The ...
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This chapter proceeds from the assumption that the direct personal experiences of the students inevitably constitute either the unspoken subtext or the creative context of a class on mysticism. The course provides an intellectual safe space through which the students can speak their own secrets and make some sense of them in relationship to their own cultural and religious traditions. The proposed class does so with respect to three main topics: mystical eroticism and sexuality, modern spirituality and the “free spirit,” and the paranormal. It provides the space within which one can meet students on a potentially deep level and speak with them about their own ambivalent relationships to all those historical realities that form the foundation and substance of a course on mysticism: tradition and text, ritual and doctrine, body and gender, scripture and religious authority, language and culture, orthodoxy and heterodoxy.Less
This chapter proceeds from the assumption that the direct personal experiences of the students inevitably constitute either the unspoken subtext or the creative context of a class on mysticism. The course provides an intellectual safe space through which the students can speak their own secrets and make some sense of them in relationship to their own cultural and religious traditions. The proposed class does so with respect to three main topics: mystical eroticism and sexuality, modern spirituality and the “free spirit,” and the paranormal. It provides the space within which one can meet students on a potentially deep level and speak with them about their own ambivalent relationships to all those historical realities that form the foundation and substance of a course on mysticism: tradition and text, ritual and doctrine, body and gender, scripture and religious authority, language and culture, orthodoxy and heterodoxy.
Holly Furneaux
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199566099
- eISBN:
- 9780191721915
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199566099.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter offers a detailed look at the limitations to the domestic accommodation of queer desires, investigating the homoerotic possibilities of overseas locales. It explores those desires that ...
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This chapter offers a detailed look at the limitations to the domestic accommodation of queer desires, investigating the homoerotic possibilities of overseas locales. It explores those desires that cannot be fully expressed and experienced at home, attending to the erotically connotative locations at which specific characters cluster. In examining the significance of these sites, it works towards a historically and geographically nuanced understanding of the premise advanced by Karl Miller that for many individuals in the 19th century ‘national ambivalence and sexual ambivalence were one and the same: the change of country [ . . . ] was caused or conditioned by a search for the exotic partner, for a love that was domestically unspeakable’. The chapter, then, gives space to Dickens's representation of asocial and ambulatory forms of eroticism.Less
This chapter offers a detailed look at the limitations to the domestic accommodation of queer desires, investigating the homoerotic possibilities of overseas locales. It explores those desires that cannot be fully expressed and experienced at home, attending to the erotically connotative locations at which specific characters cluster. In examining the significance of these sites, it works towards a historically and geographically nuanced understanding of the premise advanced by Karl Miller that for many individuals in the 19th century ‘national ambivalence and sexual ambivalence were one and the same: the change of country [ . . . ] was caused or conditioned by a search for the exotic partner, for a love that was domestically unspeakable’. The chapter, then, gives space to Dickens's representation of asocial and ambulatory forms of eroticism.
Jeremy Biles and Kent Brintnall (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823265190
- eISBN:
- 9780823266890
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265190.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Despite Georges Bataille’s acknowledged influence on major poststructuralist thinkers—including Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Barthes—and his prominence in literary, cultural, ...
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Despite Georges Bataille’s acknowledged influence on major poststructuralist thinkers—including Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Barthes—and his prominence in literary, cultural, and social theory, rarely has he been taken up by scholars of religion, even as issues of the sacred were central to his thinking. Bringing together established scholars and emerging voices, Negative Ecstasies engages Bataille from the perspective of religious studies and theology, forging links with feminist and queer theory, economics, secularism, psychoanalysis, fat studies, and ethics. As these essays demonstrate, Bataille’s work bears significance to contemporary questions in the academy and vital issues in the world. We continue to ignore him at our peril.Less
Despite Georges Bataille’s acknowledged influence on major poststructuralist thinkers—including Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Barthes—and his prominence in literary, cultural, and social theory, rarely has he been taken up by scholars of religion, even as issues of the sacred were central to his thinking. Bringing together established scholars and emerging voices, Negative Ecstasies engages Bataille from the perspective of religious studies and theology, forging links with feminist and queer theory, economics, secularism, psychoanalysis, fat studies, and ethics. As these essays demonstrate, Bataille’s work bears significance to contemporary questions in the academy and vital issues in the world. We continue to ignore him at our peril.
Ewa Mazierska, Matilda Mroz, and Elzbieta Ostrowska (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474405140
- eISBN:
- 9781474426718
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474405140.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This edited collection is the first book to draw together a range of theoretical and critical approaches relating to the filmed human bodies of Eastern European and Russian cinema. While much ...
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This edited collection is the first book to draw together a range of theoretical and critical approaches relating to the filmed human bodies of Eastern European and Russian cinema. While much research has been conducted within film studies into the representation of the body in Western European (and ‘world’) cinemas, much less attention has been paid to the bodies and sensations of Eastern European film. The collection examines representations of the body in Eastern European and Russian cinema (including the cinema of Poland, Hungary, former Czechoslovakia, and former Yugoslavia) after the Second World War, drawing on the history of the region and Western and Eastern scholarship on the body. It focuses on three areas: the traumatized body, the body as a site of erotic pleasure and the relationship between the body and history. It demonstrates how bodily discourses, oscillating between complicity and subversion, shaped individuals and societies during the period of state socialism and after its fall. A critical dissection of the ways in which human bodies are framed, ideologically and aesthetically, the ways in which they may transgress this frame, and their contact with the human bodies of the audience, is, the book argues, of invaluable significance in extending our understanding of Eastern European visual culture.Less
This edited collection is the first book to draw together a range of theoretical and critical approaches relating to the filmed human bodies of Eastern European and Russian cinema. While much research has been conducted within film studies into the representation of the body in Western European (and ‘world’) cinemas, much less attention has been paid to the bodies and sensations of Eastern European film. The collection examines representations of the body in Eastern European and Russian cinema (including the cinema of Poland, Hungary, former Czechoslovakia, and former Yugoslavia) after the Second World War, drawing on the history of the region and Western and Eastern scholarship on the body. It focuses on three areas: the traumatized body, the body as a site of erotic pleasure and the relationship between the body and history. It demonstrates how bodily discourses, oscillating between complicity and subversion, shaped individuals and societies during the period of state socialism and after its fall. A critical dissection of the ways in which human bodies are framed, ideologically and aesthetically, the ways in which they may transgress this frame, and their contact with the human bodies of the audience, is, the book argues, of invaluable significance in extending our understanding of Eastern European visual culture.
L. H. Stallings
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039591
- eISBN:
- 9780252097683
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039591.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
Funk, this book exclaims, is a multisensory and multidimensional philosophy used in conjunction with the erotic, eroticism, and black erotica. It is the affect that shapes film, performance, sound, ...
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Funk, this book exclaims, is a multisensory and multidimensional philosophy used in conjunction with the erotic, eroticism, and black erotica. It is the affect that shapes film, performance, sound, food, technology, drugs, energy, time, and the seeds of revolutionary ideas for black movements. But funk is also an experience to feel, to hear, to touch and taste, and this book uses funk in all its iterations as an innovation in black studies. The book uses funk to highlight the importance of the erotic and eroticism in black cultural and political movements, debunking “the truth of sex” and its histories. Brandishing funk as a theoretical tool, the book argues that Western theories of the erotic fail as universally applicable terms or philosophies, and thus lack utility in discussions of black bodies, subjects, and culture. In considering the Victorian concept of freak in black funk, the book proposes that black artists across all media have fashioned a tradition that embraces the superfreak, sexual guerrilla, sexual magic, mama's porn, black trans narratives, and sex work in a post-human subject position. Their goal: to ensure survival and evolution in a world that exploits black bodies in capitalist endeavors, imperialism, and colonization. Revitalizing and wide-ranging, the book offers a needed examination of black sexual cultures, a discursive evolution of black ideas about eroticism, a critique of work society, a re-examination of love, and an articulation of the body in black movements.Less
Funk, this book exclaims, is a multisensory and multidimensional philosophy used in conjunction with the erotic, eroticism, and black erotica. It is the affect that shapes film, performance, sound, food, technology, drugs, energy, time, and the seeds of revolutionary ideas for black movements. But funk is also an experience to feel, to hear, to touch and taste, and this book uses funk in all its iterations as an innovation in black studies. The book uses funk to highlight the importance of the erotic and eroticism in black cultural and political movements, debunking “the truth of sex” and its histories. Brandishing funk as a theoretical tool, the book argues that Western theories of the erotic fail as universally applicable terms or philosophies, and thus lack utility in discussions of black bodies, subjects, and culture. In considering the Victorian concept of freak in black funk, the book proposes that black artists across all media have fashioned a tradition that embraces the superfreak, sexual guerrilla, sexual magic, mama's porn, black trans narratives, and sex work in a post-human subject position. Their goal: to ensure survival and evolution in a world that exploits black bodies in capitalist endeavors, imperialism, and colonization. Revitalizing and wide-ranging, the book offers a needed examination of black sexual cultures, a discursive evolution of black ideas about eroticism, a critique of work society, a re-examination of love, and an articulation of the body in black movements.
Santiago Fouz-Hernandez (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474400473
- eISBN:
- 9781474434744
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474400473.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book covers a significant part of the history of Spanish film, from the 1920s until the present day. Starting with a study of the kiss in silent films, the volume explores homoerotic narratives ...
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This book covers a significant part of the history of Spanish film, from the 1920s until the present day. Starting with a study of the kiss in silent films, the volume explores homoerotic narratives in the crusade films of the 1940s, the commodification of bodies in the late Franco period, and the so-called destape (literally ‘undressing’) period that followed the abolition of censorship during the democratic transition. Reclaiming the importance of Spanish erotic cinema as a genre in itself, a range of international scholars demonstrate how the explicit depiction of sex can be a useful tool to illuminate current and historic social issues including ageism, colonialism, domestic violence, immigration, nationalisms, or women and LGBT rights. Covering a wide range of cinematic genres, including comedy, horror and melodrama, this book provides an innovative and provocative overview of Spanish cinema history and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Less
This book covers a significant part of the history of Spanish film, from the 1920s until the present day. Starting with a study of the kiss in silent films, the volume explores homoerotic narratives in the crusade films of the 1940s, the commodification of bodies in the late Franco period, and the so-called destape (literally ‘undressing’) period that followed the abolition of censorship during the democratic transition. Reclaiming the importance of Spanish erotic cinema as a genre in itself, a range of international scholars demonstrate how the explicit depiction of sex can be a useful tool to illuminate current and historic social issues including ageism, colonialism, domestic violence, immigration, nationalisms, or women and LGBT rights. Covering a wide range of cinematic genres, including comedy, horror and melodrama, this book provides an innovative and provocative overview of Spanish cinema history and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
