Devils, Women, and Jews
eBook - PDF

Devils, Women, and Jews

Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories

  1. 275 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Devils, Women, and Jews

Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories

About this book

Analyzes and illustrates the demonization of women and Jews in medieval sermon stories, retelling over one hundred of these tales in modern English.

Contemporary misogyny and antisemitism have their roots in the demonization of women and Jews in medieval Christendom. In church art and mass preaching, the construct of the devil as an outcast from heaven and the source of all evil was linked both to the conception of women as sensual and malicious figures betraying man's soul on its arduous journey to salvation and to the notion of Jews as treacherous dissidents in the Christian landscape. These stereotypes, widely disseminated for over three hundred years, persist today.

The exemplum, or cautionary story incorporated into preachers' manuals and popular homilies, was an important mode of religious teaching for clerical and lay folk alike. Sermon narratives drawn from Hindu mythology, Arab storytelling, and secular folktales entertained all classes of medieval society while dispensing theological and cultural instruction.

In Devils, Women, and Jews, the vital genre of the medieval sermon story is, for the first time, made accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike. Rendered in modern English, the tales provide an invaluable primary resource for medievalists, anthropologists, psychologists, folklorists, and students of women's studies and Judaica. Critical introductions and explanatory headnotes contextualize the tales, and comprehensive endnotes and a bibliography allow readers to follow up analogue and subject studies in their own areas of interest.

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Yes, you can access Devils, Women, and Jews by Joan Young Gregg in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Political Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Front Matter
  2. Content
  3. Back Matter