Incest and the Medieval Imagination is a somehow unusual book dealing with a less exploited theme. Elisabeth Archibald is a well known writer, fascinated by the paths less traveled by and the theme of incest seems to have preoccupied her long enough to finish research and write this amazing account of what people of old thought about this taboo .
This theoretical work is more than a discussion on ancient and medieval limitations, more than a nomenclature. It is a dissertation on the facts of life, facts that have influenced our mentalities and contemporary behavior. We find ourselves in the midst of classical times when Oedipus lived and died with the emblem of incest, for he married his mother and had two sons with her. We travel to the Middle Ages , when Christianity changed the face of the world and transformed uncomfortable relationships into real taboos, unmentionable sins that nowadays would make the talk of the time. We hear again about Hamlet , Judas , Gregorius, Jocasta, Myrrha, Byblis, Semiramis and so many others who broke the laws and rules of men.
If you never knew that Judas was an incestuous son, that A braham married his sister, that incest was allowed at some point in human history, or that Christians made the thinkable unthinkable and changed rules according to interest, than this book will enlighten you in so many ways.
The book is structured in seven chapters, including an Introduction, that sets the historical, mythological and literary landscape, five chapters that deal with types of incest in the Medieval imagination ( Medieval Incest), with classical transformations (Classical Legacy), with mother son incest, father daughter and siblings incest (Mother and Sons; Fathers and Daughters, Siblings and Other Relatives).
The conclusion, suggestively called: Sex, Sin and Salvation summarize the type of thinking that brings humanity to the threshold between sin and retribution , when in ancient times it was not only allowed, but at time encouraged, in order to either populate/repopulate the world or to satisfy certain urges of powerful people. Saints and certain Christian writers, such and St. Augustus
, Thomas of Aquinas
, Ovid and so on discussed and agreed or argued on the subject, sustaining facts that today’s genetics would deny or call naïve (e.g. malformations due to kinship or, au contraire, beauty divine for children born from incest) .
It is the kind of book that will set you thinking and will encourage some questions that few dared to ask.
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