Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage : From Plautus to Chaucer

Advice on sex and marriage in the literature of antiquity and the middle ages typically stressed the negative: from stereotypes of nagging wives and cheating husbands to nightmarish visions of women empowered through marriage. Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage brings together the leading scholars of this fascinating body of literature. Their essays examine a variety of ancient and early medieval writers' cautionary and often eccentric marital satire beginning with Plautus in the third century B.C.E. through Chaucer (the only non-Latin author studied). The volume demonstrates the continuity in the Latin tradition which taps into the fear of marriage and intimacy shared by ancient ascetics (Lucretius), satirists (Juvenal), comic novelists (Apuleius), and by subsequent Christian writers starting with Tertullian and Jerome, who freely used these ancient sources for their own purposes, including propaganda for recruiting a celibate clergy and the promotion of detachment and asceticism as Christian ideals. Warren S. Smith is Professor of Classical Languages at the University of New Mexico. Satiric Advice : Serious Or Not? / Warren S. Smith -- In A Different Guise : Roman Education And Greek Rhetorical Thought On Marriage / Richard Hawley -- Marriage, Adultery, And Divorce In Roman Comic Drama / Susanna Morton Braund -- The Cold Cares Of Venus : Lucretius And Anti-marriage Literature / Warren S. Smith -- Marriage And Gender In Ovid's Erotodidactic Poetry / Karla Pollmann -- Advice On Sex By The Self-defeating Satirists : Horace Sermones 1.2, Juvenal Satire 6, And Roman Satiric Writing / Warren S. Smith -- Chaste Artemis And Lusty Aphrodite : The Portrait Of Women And Marriage In The Greek And Latin Novels / Regine May -- Dissuading From Marriage : Jerome And The Asceticization Of Satire / Elizabeth A. Clark -- Change And Continuity In Pagan And Christian (invective) Thought On Women And Marriage From Antiquity To The Middle Ages / Barbara Feichtinger -- Walter As Valerius : Classical And Christian In The Dissuasio / Ralph Hanna Iii And Warren S. Smith -- Antifeminism In The High Middle Ages / P.g. Walsh -- The Wife Of Bath And Dorigen Debate Jerome / Warren S. Smith. Warren S. Smith, Editor. Includes Bibliography (p. 271-286) And Index. Scholars of classics and religion, mostly British or American, sample satiric attitudes about women and marriage written in Latin from about 200 BC through Walter Map in the 12th century, with two closing chapters on Chaucer writing in Middle English during the 14th. Among their topics are Roman education and Greek rhetorical thought on marriage, a This book includes a series of chapters on satiric advice on women (in particular, sexual involvement with women) and marriage.