The Once and Future Sex By Eleanor Janega
- Narrated by: Samara Naeymi
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Release date: 01-17-23
The Once and Future Sex By Eleanor Janega AudioBook Summary
A vibrant and illuminating exploration of medieval thinking on women’s beauty, sexuality, and behavior.
What makes for the ideal woman? How should she look, love, and be? In this high-spirited history, medievalist Eleanor Janega turns to the Middle Ages, the era that bridged the ancient world and modern society, to unfurl its suppositions about women and reveal what’s shifted over time—and what hasn’t.
Enshrined medieval thinkers, almost always male, subscribed to a blend of classical Greek and Roman philosophy and Christian theology for their concepts of the sexes. For the height of female attractiveness, they chose the mythical Helen of Troy, whose imagined pear shape, small breasts, and golden hair served as beauty’s epitome. Casting Eve’s shadow over medieval women, they derided them as oversexed sinners, inherently lustful, insatiable, and weak. And, unless a nun, a woman was to be the embodiment of perfect motherhood.
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