Suspended animation : pain, pleasure and punishment in medieval culture / Robert Mills.
"Hanging, flaying, beating, anti-Semitic violence and the torture of sodomites - the darker side of life in medieval Europe has fuelled the imagery of many books and films. We know exactly what is meant in the film Pulp Fiction when one character declares 'I'm gonna git Medieval on yo...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Ebook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
London :
Reaktion,
2005.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Art & Architecture Complete |
| Summary: | "Hanging, flaying, beating, anti-Semitic violence and the torture of sodomites - the darker side of life in medieval Europe has fuelled the imagery of many books and films. We know exactly what is meant in the film Pulp Fiction when one character declares 'I'm gonna git Medieval on your ass'. But the stereotype of uncontrolled violence inflicted in the distant past in not only historically misleading, it also tricks us into believing that there is an unbridgeable gulf between modernity and the Middle Ages." "In Suspended Animation Robert Mills tackles this misconception head on, confronting these uncomfortable medieval practices on their own ground. He exposes the reader to a host of challenging, sometimes shocking texts and images - from the graphic punishments of hell in Tuscan frescoes to the 'de-breasting' inflicted on St. Barbara - and shows how these relate in revealing ways to elements of pleasure and pain in modern sexuality and even pornography. He takes in a rich variety of material, from fifteenth-century French poetry to the Billie Holiday song Strange Fruit, and through these sometimes startling juxtapositions he reveals that the ties between the modern and the medieval period are both closer and stranger than we might imagine." "Suspended Animation also makes a fresh contribution to theoretical debates on premodern gender and sexuality, and proposes a new concept for understanding the medieval imagination - the aesthetic of suspense."--BOOK JACKET. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (248 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations (some colour) |
| Format: | Mode of access: World Wide Web. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 1282264834 1861895534 9781282264830 9781861895530 |