Download Free Virgins And Martyrs Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Virgins And Martyrs and write the review.

Stories of the torture and execution of beautiful Christian women first appeared in late antiquity and proliferated during the early Middle Ages. A thousand years later, virgin martyrs were still the most popular female saints. Their legends, in countless retellings through the centuries, preserved a standard plot—the heroine resists a pagan suitor, endures cruelties inflicted by her rejected lover or outraged family, works miracles, and dies for Christ. That sequence was embellished by incidents emblematic of the specific saint: Juliana's battle with the devil, Barbara's immurement in the tower, Katherine's encounter with spiked wheels. Karen A. Winstead examines this seemingly static story form and discovers subtle shifts in the representation of the virgin martyrs, as their legends were adapted for changing audiences in late medieval England.
In modern times, the medieval stories of the saints have been either simply ignored or have been interpreted as colorful examples of cultural history, all the while ignoring their central character and initial purpose: Christ. But the legends and stories of the saints were always told within and around the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church. In other words, the saints were tools in preaching and promoting the Gospel of Christ. This clearly written book is a search for a way to read the medieval legends of the saints-- all saints--through the stories of the Virgin Martyrs, so that that their original and powerful stories speak to us once again. The stories of all the saints were written by people who were immersed in the Scriptures and who lived and breathed the words, images, ideas, symbols, poetry.
Virgin martyrs make up one of the largest categories of medieval saints. To judge by their frequent appearances in art and literature, they also figure among the most venerated. The legends of virgin martyrs, retold in various ways through the centuries, illuminate trends in popular piety, values, and literary tastes. Chaste Passions contains sixteen English virgin martyr legends, each of a different saint and each translated into colloquial, modern English prose. Faithful in tone and meaning to the originals, Karen Winstead's lively translations allow contemporary readers to appreciate why virgin martyr legends thrived for hundreds of years. Winstead presents the tales in chronological order, tracing the effects of the composition and tastes of the audience on the development of the genre. The virgin martyr, Winstead tells us, escapes the confining female stereotypes--demure maiden or disruptive shrew--prevalent in writings of the period. Because nearly all of the texts were written by men but addressed to women, they exhibit a fascinating interplay between male views of so-called women's literature and the demands of their intended audience. Familiarity with this widely read genre is essential to a full understanding of medieval culture, and Chaste Passions is an excellent introduction to these often racy, sometimes comic, tales
Virgin martyrs make up one of the largest categories of medieval saints. To judge by their frequent appearances in art and literature, they also figure among the most venerated. The legends of virgin martyrs, retold in various ways through the centuries, illuminate trends in popular piety, values, and literary tastes. Chaste Passions contains sixteen English virgin martyr legends, each of a different saint and each translated into colloquial, modern English prose. Faithful in tone and meaning to the originals, Karen Winstead's lively translations allow contemporary readers to appreciate why virgin martyr legends thrived for hundreds of years. Winstead presents the tales in chronological order, tracing the effects of the composition and tastes of the audience on the development of the genre. The virgin martyr, Winstead tells us, escapes the confining female stereotypes—demure maiden or disruptive shrew—prevalent in writings of the period. Because nearly all of the texts were written by men but addressed to women, they exhibit a fascinating interplay between male views of so-called women's literature and the demands of their intended audience. Familiarity with this widely read genre is essential to a full understanding of medieval culture, and Chaste Passions is an excellent introduction to these often racy, sometimes comic, tales
The tales of the virgin martyrs inevitably emphasize the torture and mutilation of beautiful young women. To the modern reader, these popular texts seem like exercises in sadism, but while they could be made to function as vehicles for active misogyny, they also provided Medieval women such as Hildegard of Bingen and Joan of Arc with role models who helped them to shape their own extraordinary destinies. This book explores the ability of the virgin body to generate contradictory meanings, both repressive and liberating, depending on who told the tale and how it was told.
From WATER STREET PRESS New Yorkers open their Sunday morning paper to find a photo of Virgil Quinn, teacher of history at St. Lucy's School for Boys, splashed all over the front page. How did he get there? Scandal, of course. Virgil has made enemies-the Cardinal of New York not the least among them. The Cardinal's research reveals that Virgil has lived many lives, all of them scandalous. Was he really a ranking nun in the Sisters of Mercy of Baton Rouge? Did he really walk the ramps of Seventh Avenue as the city's highest paid supermodel? Just how did he come to know all those men whose names appear in his notorious (and deadly convenient) Black Books? Virgins & Martyrs is shrewd and malicious fun, a wicked commentary on love, life, gender and the history of our nation, a work in which the peripatetic and intrepid-yet all-too-human-Virgil Quinn lets no one off the hook.