{"product_id":"indecent-exposure-9780812248043","title":"Indecent Exposure","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eMen and women struggling for control of marriage and sexuality; narratives that focus on trickery, theft, and adultery; descriptions of sexual activities and body parts, the mention of which is prohibited in polite society: such are the elements that constitute what Nicole Nolan Sidhu calls a medieval discourse of obscene comedy, in which a particular way of thinking about men, women, and household organization crosses genres, forms, and languages. Inviting its audiences to laugh at violations of what is good, decent, and seemly, obscene comedy manifests a semiotic instability that at once supports established hierarchies and delights in overturning them.\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eIndecent Exposure\u003c\/i\u003e, Sidhu explores the varied functions of obscene comedy in the literary and visual culture of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England. In chapters that examine Chaucer''s \u003ci\u003eReeve''s Tale\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eLegend of Good Women\u003c\/i\u003e; Langland''s \u003ci\u003ePiers Plowman\u003c\/i\u003e; Lydgate''s \u003ci\u003eMumming at Hertford\u003c\/i\u003e, \u0026lt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eIndecent Exposure\u003c\/i\u003e offers a field-changing and astute discussion of literary engagements with obscenity in Middle English literature. Although Nicole Sidhu's monograph focuses on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century obscene comedy in Middle English, it also provides a contextualization of this discourse in other European vernaculars and in a variety of literary and visual contexts, such as manuscript illuminations and devotional texts, sermons in particular.\" * \u003ci\u003eStudies in the Age of Chaucer\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\"[A] thoroughly fascinating study..Sidhu's book is an insightful and well-grounded look into how obscene comedy does more than provoke laughter in the works of fourteenth-and fifteenth-century authors.\" * \u003ci\u003eComitatus\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\"Nicole Nolan Sidhu has written a compelling book that delivers what its title promises: an engaging and ground-breaking investigation which intersects the rhetoric of obscenity, gender, and political theory in Middle English literature… In its entirety, the book is captivating and provides important insights and considerable analysis. Containing essential understandings of the political valence of medieval obscenity, the study’s innovative approach is certain to delineate new research directions and will appeal to an engaged and cross-disciplinary audience with an interest in gender and media issues.\" * Parergon *\u003cbr\u003e\"In the current moment, characterized by prominence of obscenity in American political discourse and the use of satirical comedy as the most widespread form of political critique, Sidhu's analysis of the workings of obscene comedy is timely indeed . . . \u003ci\u003eIndecent Exposure\u003c\/i\u003e belongs on the bookshelf of not only medievalists interested in vernacular literary studies, humor, political resistance, and gender and sexuality studies, but also readers interested in the long history of media studies and social change.\" * \u003ci\u003eDigital Philology\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\"Fresh and provocative, \u003ci\u003eIndecent Exposure\u003c\/i\u003e is a substantive and original work that promises to change the way we think about obscene comedy in medieval texts.\" * Eve Salisbury, Western Michigan University *\u003cbr\u003e\"Nicole Nolan Sidhu reorients how we think about the category of 'obscene comedy' by focusing on how it provides late medieval English authors with a new political language. This allows them to work within the purview of dominant ideologies while at the same time pursuing alternative questions or insurgent critiques of these same ideologies.\" * Glenn Burger, Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNote on the Fabliaux\u003cbr\u003e Introduction. Obscenity in Medieval Culture and Literature\u003cbr\u003e PART I. FOURTEENTH-CENTURY PIONEERS\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 1. Comedy and Critique: Obscenity and Langland's Reproof of Established Powers in \u003ci\u003ePiers Plowman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2. Chaucer's Poetics of the Obscene: Classical Narrative and Fabliau Politics in Fragment One of the \u003ci\u003eCanterbury Tales\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Legend of Good Women\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e PART II. FIFTEENTH-CENTURY HEIRS\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 3. The Henpecked Subject: Misogyny, Poetry, and Masculine Community in the Writing of John Lydgate\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 4. \"Ryth Wikked\": Christian Ethics and the Unruly Holy Woman in the \u003ci\u003eBook of Margery Kempe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 5. Women's Work, Companionate Marriage, and Mass Death in the Biblical Drama\u003cbr\u003e Conclusion. Lessons of the Medieval Obscene\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49405727506775,"sku":"9780812248043","price":59.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780812248043.jpg?v=1730493416","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/indecent-exposure-9780812248043","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}