Sex, Love & Marriage in the Elizabethan Age

Sex, Love & Marriage in the Elizabethan Age PDF Author: R. E. Pritchard
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1526754630
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
The romantic and practical entanglements practiced by the working class, gentry, nobility, and even the Queen—from the author of Scandalous Liaisons. Most people have always been interested in sex, love and marriage. Now, this entertaining and informative book explores the surprisingly varied and energetic sex and love lives of the women and men of Queen Elizabeth’s England. A range of writers, from the famous, such as Shakespeare, John Donne and Ben Jonson, and lesser-known figures popular in their time, provide, in their witty stories, poems and plays, vivid pictures of Elizabethan sexual attitudes and experiences, while sober reports from the church courts tell of seductions, adulteries and rapes. Here we also encounter private journals and scenes from ordinary marriages, with complaints of women’s fashions, bossy wives and domineering husbands. Besides this, there are accounts of the busy whores of London brothels, homosexual activity and the Court’s amorous carousel of predatory aristocrats, promiscuous ladies and hopeful maids of honour. We conclude with the frustrations of The Virgin Queen herself. This lively review of Elizabethan sexuality, in its various forms, much of it brought together for the first time, should intrigue and amuse anyone with an interest in history, and how love used to be lived, “in good Queen Bess’s golden days.” “A unique look at love and marriage in the late Tudor dynasty.” —Adventures of a Tudor Nerd “Informative and, at times, funny . . . stories and accounts that seem to make Elizabethan England jump off the page at you.” —Love British History

Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England

Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England PDF Author: Carol McGrath
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1526769190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
From the acclaimed author of the Rose Trilogy, “a terrific, informative read for the armchair historian. A fascinating read, packed with juicy details” (Elizabeth Chadwick, New York Times–bestselling author). The Tudor period has long gripped our imaginations. Because we have consumed so many costume dramas on TV and film, read so many histories, factual or romanticized, we think we know how this society operated. We know they “did” romance but how did they do sex? In this affectionate, informative, and fascinating look at sex and sexuality in Tudor times, author Carol McGrath peeks beneath the bedsheets of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century England to offer a genuine understanding of the romantic and sexual habits of our Tudor ancestors. Find out the truth about “swiving,” “bawds,” “shaking the sheets” and “the deed of darkness.” Discover the infamous indiscretions and scandals, feast day rituals, the Southwark Stews, and even city streets whose names indicated their use for sexual pleasure. Explore Tudor fashion: the codpiece, slashed hose, and doublets, women’s layered dressing with partlets, overgowns, and stomachers laced tightly in place. What was the Church view on morality, witchcraft, and the female body? On which days could married couples indulge in sex and why? How were same sex relationships perceived? How common was adultery? How did they deal with contraception and how did Tudors attempt to cure venereal disease? And how did people bend and ignore all these rules? “[This] fascinating book explores the VERY unsavoury history of sex in Tudor England.” —Daily Mail

Love, Lust, and License in Early Modern England

Love, Lust, and License in Early Modern England PDF Author: Johanna Rickman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351921223
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
Focusing on cases of extramarital sex, Johanna Rickman investigates fornication, adultery and bastard bearing among the English nobility during the Elizabethan and early Stuart period. Since members of the nobility were not generally brought before the ecclesiastical courts, which had jurisdiction over other citizens' sexual offences, Rickman's sources include collections of family papers (primarily letters), state papers, and literary texts (prescriptive manuals, love sonnets, satirical verse, and prose romances), as well as legal documents. Rickman explores how attitudes towards illicit sex varied greatly throughout the period of study, roughly 1560 - 1630. Whole some viewed it as a minor infraction, others, directed by a religious moral code, viewed it as a serious sin. seeks to illuminate the place of noblewomenin early modern aristocratic culture, both as historical subjects (considering personal circumstances) and as a social group (considering social position and status).She argues that two different gender ideals were in operation simultaneously: one primarily religious ideal, which lauded female silence, obedience, and chastity, and another, more secular ideal, which required noblewomen to be beautiful, witty, brave, and receptive to the games of courtly love.

'Untamed Desire'

'Untamed Desire' PDF Author: Alan Haynes
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 9780811715249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
Explores sexual behavior in the Elizabethan age through the literature and literary personalities of the period. A discussion of brothels, love and marriage, homosexuality, and transvestism included.

Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship

Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship PDF Author: Ilona Bell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521630078
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
This 1999 book offers an original study of lyric form and social custom in the Elizabethan age. Ilona Bell explores the tendency of Elizabethan love poems not only to represent an amorous thought, but to conduct the courtship itself. Where studies have focused on courtiership, patronage and preferment at court, her focus is on love poetry, amorous courtship, and relations between Elizabethan men and women. The book examines the ways in which the tropes and rhetoric of love poetry were used to court Elizabethan women (not only at court and in the great houses, but in society at large) and how the women responded to being wooed, in prose, poetry and speech. Bringing together canonical male poets and women writers, Ilona Bell investigates a range of texts addressed to, written by, read, heard or transformed by Elizabethan women, and charts the beginnings of a female lyric tradition.

Finding the Love of Your Life

Finding the Love of Your Life PDF Author: Neil Clark Warren
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671892010
Category : Love
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
In 25 years of counseling couples, Dr. Neil Clark Warren discovered that marriages most often fail because people simply choose the wrong person to marry. In this Gold Medallion award-winner, an 11-month Christian Booksellers Association bestseller, Dr. Clark shares ten proven principles for finding the perfect mate.

Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London

Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London PDF Author: Shannon McSheffrey
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203976
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Book Description
Awarded honorable mention for the 2007 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize sponsored by the Canadian Historical Association How were marital and sexual relationships woven into the fabric of late medieval society, and what form did these relationships take? Using extensive documentary evidence from both the ecclesiastical court system and the records of city and royal government, as well as advice manuals, chronicles, moral tales, and liturgical texts, Shannon McSheffrey focuses her study on England's largest city in the second half of the fifteenth century. Marriage was a religious union—one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church and imbued with deep spiritual significance—but the marital unit of husband and wife was also the fundamental domestic, social, political, and economic unit of medieval society. As such, marriage created political alliances at all levels, from the arena of international politics to local neighborhoods. Sexual relationships outside marriage were even more complicated. McSheffrey notes that medieval Londoners saw them as variously attributable to female seduction or to male lustfulness, as irrelevant or deeply damaging to society and to the body politic, as economically productive or wasteful of resources. Yet, like marriage, sexual relationships were also subject to control and influence from parents, relatives, neighbors, civic officials, parish priests, and ecclesiastical judges. Although by medieval canon law a marriage was irrevocable from the moment a man and a woman exchanged vows of consent before two witnesses, in practice marriage was usually a socially complicated process involving many people. McSheffrey looks more broadly at sex, governance, and civic morality to show how medieval patriarchy extended a far wider reach than a father's governance over his biological offspring. By focusing on a particular time and place, she not only elucidates the culture of England's metropolitan center but also contributes generally to our understanding of the social mechanisms through which premodern European people negotiated their lives.

Luther and Katharina

Luther and Katharina PDF Author: Jody Hedlund
Publisher: WaterBrook
ISBN: 160142762X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Book Description
A Christy Award-winning novel chronicling the forbidden romance between Martin Luther and his wife, Katharina von Bora, set against the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. She was a nun of noble birth. He was a heretic, a reformer, and an outlaw of the Holy Roman Empire. In the 16th century, nun Katharina von Bora’s fate fell no further than the Abbey. Until she read the writings of Martin Luther. His sweeping Catholic church reformation—condemning a cloistered life and promoting the goodness of marriage—awakened her desire for everything she’d been forbidden. Including Martin Luther himself. Despite the fact that the attraction and tension between them is undeniable, Luther holds fast to his convictions and remains isolated, refusing to risk anyone’s life but his own. And Katharina longs for love, but is strong-willed. She clings proudly to her class distinction, pining for nobility over the heart of a reformer. They couldn’t be more different. But as the world comes tumbling down around them, and with Luther’s threatened life a constant strain, these unlikely allies forge an unexpected bond of understanding, support and love. Together, they will alter the religious landscape forever. - Christy Award: Historical Romance Fiction Winner

The Deserted Bride

The Deserted Bride PDF Author: Paula Marshall
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1460360745
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
Bess was a girl when she first saw her husband on their wedding day. Andrew, Earl of Exford, left after the ceremony, and as Bess blossomed into a lovely woman, she reveled in the freedom afforded by her absent spouse. Yet she knew the day would come when she would come face-to-face with her long-estranged husband.… On the day of his return, Drew found himself speechless at his wife's heart-stopping beauty and charm. Could it be that this once awkward girl was the bride he had deserted so long ago? Furthermore, could she ever forgive his cruel neglect and return his love?

Love, Sex, and Marriage Through the Ages

Love, Sex, and Marriage Through the Ages PDF Author: Bernard I. Murstein
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 666

Book Description