Erotic Discourse and Early English Religious Writing / The New Middle Ages (PDF)

LARA FARINA is an Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia University, USA, where she teaches courses on medieval literature and culture, the history of sexuality, and materialist approaches to literature.

'Erotic Discourse and Early English Religious Writing should become regular reading for scholars of any of the fields it touches upon, and we can only anticipate with delight further studies from Dr. Farina.' - Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Training

"This concise, engaging book examines the erotic dimension of medieval religious texts through a consideration of the physical and social situations of enclosed readers . . . it moves confidently between different realms of inquiry , bringing modern theoretical perspectives into conversation with medieval texts and their historical situations . . . In the links she makes between works not often read together, her thoughtful and comprehensive contextualization of them (both in the text and in the notes), and the broad and inclusive understanding she offers of readers' desires in medieval England, Farina has given us a book that is 'fructuous, and that in litel space.'" - Speculum"Farina's book makes a valuable contribution to the study of early medieval sexuality - especially in Anglo-Saxon England. Most importantly, the real value of Farina's book is in her excavation of the structures of the spatialized embodiments of affective reading practices - how, in the intersections of 'real' and 'imagined' spaces, the body is always, even when reading, somehow in motion" - Sixteenth Century Journal