Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage: From Plautus to Chaucer

by Warren S. Smith (Editor)

Overview

Advice on sex and marriage in the literature of antiquity and the middle ages typically stressed the negative: from stereotypes of nagging wives and cheating husbands to nightmarish visions of women empowered through marriage. Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage brings together the leading scholars of this fascinating body of literature. Their essays examine a variety of ancient and early medieval writers' cautionary and often eccentric marital satire beginning with Plautus in the third century B.C.E. through Chaucer (the only non-Latin author studied). The volume demonstrates the continuity in the Latin tradition which taps into the fear of marriage and intimacy shared by ancient ascetics (Lucretius), satirists (Juvenal), comic novelists (Apuleius), and by subsequent Christian writers starting with Tertullian and Jerome, who freely used these ancient sources for their own purposes, including propaganda for recruiting a celibate clergy and the promotion of detachment and asceticism as Christian ideals.

Warren S. Smith is Professor of Classical Languages at the University of New Mexico.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472026296
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	02/24/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	308
File size:	708 KB

About the Author

Warren S. Smith is Professor of Classical Languages at the University of New Mexico.

Table of Contents

\rrhp\ \lrrh: Contents\ \1h\ Contents \xt\ \comp: set page numbers on page proof\ Chapter 1. Satiric Advice: Serious or Not? Warren S. Smith Chapter 2. "In a Different Guise": Roman Education and Greek Rhetorical Thought on Marriage Richard Hawley Chapter 3. Marriage, Adultery, and Divorce in Roman Comic Drama Susanna Morton Braund Chapter 4. "The Cold Cares of Venus": Lucretius and Anti-Marriage Literature Warren S. Smith Chapter 5. Marriage and Gender in Ovid's Erotodidactic Poetry Karla Pollmann Chapter 6. Advice on Sex by the Self-Defeating Satirists: Horace Sermones 1.2, Juvenal Satire 6, and Roman Satiric Writing Warren S. Smith Chapter 7. Chaste Artemis and Lusty Aphrodite: The Portrait of Women and Marriage in the Greek and Latin Novels Regine May Chapter 8. Dissuading from Marriage: Jerome and the Asceticization of Satire Elizabeth A. Clark Chapter 9. Change and Continuity in Pagan and Christian (Invective) Thought on Women and Marriage from Antiquity to the Middle Ages Barbara Feichtinger Chapter 10. Walter as Valerius: Classical and Christian in the Dissuasio Ralph Hanna III and Warren S. Smith Chapter 11. Antifeminism in the High Middle Ages P. G. Walsh Chapter 12. The Wife of Bath and Dorigen Debate Jerome Warren S. Smith Bibliography Contributors Index \to come\ \eof\