'...a fascinating analysis of the status of the obscene and its representation in pornography in modern culture.... Caputi's thesis is masterfully argued....'-James Glass, University of Maryland

This volume makes most wide-ranging attempt ever to probe the natures, origins, and consequences of obscenity in medieval literature, art, theater, and law. One large section examines obscenity in medieval French literature, especially fabliaux; but the rest of the book explores obscenity in cultures and languages of other regions in Europe.

As anyone who has read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales knows, Middle English literature is rife with sexually explicit language and situations. Less canonical works can be even more brazen in describing illicit acts of sexual activity and sexual violence. Such scenes and language were not, however, included exclusively for titillation. In Obscene Pedagogies, Carissa M. Harris argues instead for obscenity’s usefulness in sexual education. She investigates the relationship between obscenity, gender, and pedagogy in Middle English and Middle Scots literary texts from 1300 to 1580 to show how sexually explicit and defiantly vulgar speech taught readers and listeners about sexual behavior and consent. Through innovative close readings of literary texts including erotic lyrics, single-woman’s songs, debate poems between men and women, Scottish insult poetry battles, and The Canterbury Tales, Harris demonstrates how through its transgressive charge and galvanizing shock value, obscenity taught audiences about gender, sex, pleasure, and power in ways both positive and harmful. She focuses in particular on understudied female-voiced lyrics and gendered debate poems, many of which have their origin in oral culture, and includes teaching-ready editions of fourteen largely unknown anonymous lyrics in women’s voices. Harris’s own voice, proudly witty and sharply polemical, inspires the reader to address these medieval texts with an eye on contemporary issues of gender, violence, and misogyny.

1940

Mr. September Name: Garrett McGrath Game: F-U-N! Flame: Headstrong Shelby Halford Aim: To get Shelby from the boardroom to the bedroom! I've got three beliefs: 1. You want what you can't have; 2. Business and pleasure should always mix; 3. No challenge is too great. And showing Miss Haughty Halford how much fun work can be is the perfect way to put my policies into action. I know she thinks her blue blood can't mix with my blue-collar background. But give me a few weeks alone with "Her Royal Highness" in this steamy tropical paradise, and I'll teach Shelby all about mergers and acquisitions…of the most intimate kind!

Film & Ethics considers a range of films and texts of film criticism alongside disparate philosophical discourses of ethics by Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, Lacanian psychoanalysts and postmodern theorists.

Media Ethics brings together philosophers, academics and media professionals to debate pressing ethical and moral questions for journalists and the media and to examine basic notions such as truth, virtue, privacy, rights, offence, harm and freedom which are used in answering them.