The Erotics of Grief: Emotions and the Construction of Privilege in the Medieval Mediterranean

Megan Moore

Published by Cornell University Press 2021

The Erotics of Grief

Emotions and the Construction of Privilege in the Medieval Mediterranean

Megan Moore

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501758416

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Erotics of Grief considers how emotions propagate power by exploring whose lives are grieved and what kinds of grief are valuable within and eroticized by medieval narratives. Megan Moore argues that grief is not only routinely eroticized in medieval literature but that it is a foundational emotion of medieval elite culture.

Focusing on the concept of grief as desire, Moore builds on the history of the emotions and Georges Bataille's theory of the erotic as the conflict between desire and death, one that perversely builds a sense of community organized around a desire for death. The link between desire and death serves as an affirmation of living communities. Moore incorporates literary, visual, and codicological evidence in sources from across the Mediterranean—from Old French chansons de geste, such as the Song of Roland and La mort le roi Artu and romances such as Erec et Enide, Philomena, and Floire et Blancheflor; to Byzantine and ancient Greek novels; to Middle English travel narratives such as Mandeville's Travels.

In her reading of the performance of grief as one of community and remembrance, Moore assesses why some lives are imagined as mattering more than others and explores how a language of grief becomes a common language of status among the medieval Mediterranean elite.

Author / Editor information

Megan Moore is Associate Professor of French at the University of Missouri. She is author of Exchanges in Exoticism. Follow her on X @lagourmande.

Reviews

A welcome addition to histories of emotion, to medieval Mediterranean studies, work on gender, desire and sexuality, as well as work on medieval communities and biopolitics.

Cary Howie, Cornell University, author of Transfiguring Medievalism:

Megan Moore's book on the uses of grief in medieval literature is a welcome addition to conversations about the complexity of medieval representations of intense feeling. Thoroughly researched and sensitive to the nuances of its objects, The Erotics of Grief demonstrates how important scenes of mourning are to the construction of communities, especially noble communities, in the Middle Ages.

Angela Jane Weisl, Seton Hall University, author of The Persistence of Medievalism:

In The Erotics of Grief, Megan Moore effectively brings together discourse on gender, community, narrative, eroticism, and mourning to theorize medieval grief in a broad context. Readable, well-researched, and in dialogue with a large body of criticism and theory, it will be valuable to anyone interested in medieval death—and those it left behind.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Desire and Death in Elite Medieval Emotional Communities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. Philomena and the Erotics of Privilege in the Middle Ages Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
Chapter 2. Widows and the Romance of Grief Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Chapter 3. Masculinity, Mourning, and Epic Sacrifice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
Chapter 4. Toward a Mediterranean Erotics of Grief Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
Conclusion: The Erotics of Grief and the Stakes of Community Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	156
Appendix 1: Selected Illuminations of Knights Being Grieved Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
Appendix 2. Selected Illuminations of Lovers in Death Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 204
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 7
- Images: 5
- Tables: 2
- Other: 5 b&w halftones, 2 charts
Keywords: Love in medieval texts; Medieval privilege; Medieval gender literature; Mediterranean emotions; sexuality literature

eBook

Published: September 15, 2021
ISBN: 9781501758416