(P/B) THE KISS IN HISTORY

Παρουσίαση

Writers have previously placed the action of kissing into categories: kisses of love, affection, peace, respect and friendship. Each of the essays in this fascinating book take a single kind of kiss and uses it as an index to the past. For rather than offering a simple history of the kiss, this book is about the kiss in history.
In this collection, an eminent group of cultural historians have explored this subject using an exceptionally wide range of evidence. They explore the kiss through sources as diverse as canonical religious texts, popular prints, court depositions, periodicals, diaries and poetry. In casting the net so wide, these authors demonstrate how cultural history has been shaped by a broad concept of culture, encompassing more than simply the canons of art and literature, and integrating apparently ‘historical’ and ‘non-historical’ sources. Furthermore, this collections shows that by analyzing the kiss and its position - embedded as it is as part of our culture - history can use small gestures to take us to big issues concerning ourselves and others, the past and the present.
With an afterword by Sir Keith Thomas, this book will be fascinating reading for cultural historians working on a wide range of different societies and periods. (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Introduction - Karen Harvey
Part I - Worship and ritual
1. The kiss of peace in the German Reformation - Craig Koslofsky
2. The osculum infame: heresy, secular culture and the image of the witches' Sabbath - Jonathan Durrant
Part II - Ambiguity and transgression
3. Lawful kisses? Sexual ambiguity and platonic friendship in England c. 1660-1720 - Helen Berry
4. Adulterous kisses and the meanings of familiarity in early modern Britain - David M. Turner
5. The kiss of life in the eighteenth century: the fate of an ambiguous kiss - Luke Davidson
Part III - Power and Intimacy
6. Kisses for votes: the kiss and corruption in eighteenth-century English elections - Elaine Chalus
7. Illness and impact: the mistress of the house and the governess - Carole Williams
8. 'Kiss me, Hardy': The dying kiss in the First World War trenches - Santanu Das
Afterword - Keith Thomas