The myths of Genesis are the foundation for hundreds of texts written at later diachronically distinct and datable periods. Seven texts-Genesis itself, Genesis Rabbah, Pirke deRabbi Eliezer and mediaeval compilations-are examined here, with five interrelated questions in focus: Can structuralist theory be applied usefully to societies conscious of history and change? What is the relationship between continuity and trasformation as a mythological tradition develops diachronically? What role does diachronic development within a myth play in relation to its underlying structure? What is the synchronic structure of Israelite (or rather, biblical) myth? Are there identifiable patterns of transformation and continuity between biblical myth and the three diachronically distinct levels of rabbinic myth?

This study is directed towards providing basic background material for the understanding of South Sumatran social organisation. To this end, four legal codes from the first half of the nineteenth century are presented and analysed. The method used in the analysis is a modification of that used by Levi-Strauss for the analysis of myth. The author concludes by stating: "Out of these detailed analyses the most significant phenomenon to emerge is the fact that a relatively small number of formal properties are distributed through a large number of structures within a single legal code, and because of their formal similarities these structures are mutually reinforcing".

'Incest' refers to illegal sexual relations between family members. Its precise contours, however, are culturally specific. Hence, an illegal incestuous union in one social context may be a legal close-kin union in another. First-degree sexual unions, between a parent and child, or between siblings, are most widely prohibited and abhorred. This book discusses all overt and covert first-degree incest relations in the Hebrew Bible and also probes the significance of gaps and what these imply about projected sexual and social values. As the dominant opinion on the origin of first-degree incest continues to be shaped, new voices such as those of queer and post-feminist criticism have joined the conversation. It navigates not only the incest laws of Leviticus and the narratives of Lot and his daughters and of Amnon and Tamar but pursues subtler intimations of first-degree sexual unions, such as between Adam and his (absent but arguably implied) mother, Haran and Terah's wife, Ham and Noah. In pursuing the psycho-social values that may be drawn from the Hebrew Bible regarding first-degree incest, this book will provide a thorough review of incest studies from the early 20th century onward and explain and assess the contribution of very recent critical approaches from queer and post-feminist perspectives.

This collection offers a vibrant exploration of the bonds between sexual difference and political structure in Greek tragedy. In looking at how the acts of violence and tortured kinship relations are depicted in the work of all three major Greek tragic playwrights—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—the contributors shed light on the workings and failings of the Greek polis, and explore the means by which sexual difference and the city take shape in relation to each other. The volume complements and expands the efforts of current feminist interpretations of Antigone and the Oresteia by considering the meanings of tragedy for ancient Athenian audiences while also unveiling the reverberations of Greek tragedy's formulations and dilemmas in modern political life and for contemporary political philosophy.

The origins of the incest taboo have puzzled many of the most influential minds of the West, from Plutarch to St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, David Hume, Lewis Henry Morgan, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Edward Westermarck, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. This book puts the discussion of incest on a new foundation. It is the first attempt to thoroughly examine the rich literature, from philosophical, theological, and legal treatises to psychological and biological-genetic studies, to a wide variety of popular cultural media over a long period of time. The book offers a detailed examination of discursive and figurative representations of incest during five selected periods, from 1600 to the present. The incest discussion for each period is complemented with a presentation of dominant kinship structures and changes, without arguing for causal relations. Part I deals with the legacy of ecclesiastical marriage prohibitions of the Middle Ages: Historians dealing with the Reformation have wondered about the political and social implications of theological debates about the incest rules, the Enlightenment opted for sociological considerations of the household and a new anthropology based on the passions, Baroque discourse focused upon sexual relations among kin by marriage, while Enlightenment and Romantic discussions worried the intimacy of siblings. The first section of Part II deals with the six decades around 1900, during which European and American cultures obsessed about the sexuality of women. Almost everyone concurred in the idea that mother made the family what it was; that she configured the household, kept the lines of kinship vibrant, and stood at the threshold as stern gatekeeper, and many thought that she managed these tasks through her sexuality and an eroticized relationship with sons. Another story line, taken up in the section "Intermezzo," this one about the physical and mental consequences of inbreeding, appeared after 1850. To what extent do close-kin marriages pose risks for progeny? At its center, lay the incest problematic, now restated: Is avoidance of kin genetically programmed? Do all cultures know about risks of consanguinity? As for the twenty-first century, evolutionary and genetic assumptions are challenged by a living world population containing roughly one billion offspring of cousin marriages. Part III deals with one of the perhaps most remarkable reconfigurations of Western kinship in the aftermath of World War I: The shift from an endogamous to an exogamous alliance system centered on the "nuclear family." An historical anomaly, this family form began to dissolve almost as soon as it came together and, in the process, shifted the focus of incest concerns to a new pairing: father and daughter. By the 1970s, when the father/daughter problematic swept all other considerations of incest aside, that relationship had come to be modeled, for the most part, around power and its abusive potential. As for "incest," its representations in the last three decades of the twentieth century no longer focused on biologically damaged progeny but rather on power abuses in the nuclear family: sexual "abuse." By the mid-1990s, Western culture at least partly redirected its gaze away from father and daughter towards siblings, especially towards brothers and sisters and the sexual boundaries and erotics of their relationships. Correspondingly, siblings became a "model organism" for psychotherapy, evolutionary biology, and the science of genetics.

Grapples conscientiously with biblical texts at the heart of the church's debate over same-sex relationships This thought-provoking book by James Brownson develops a broad, cross-cultural sexual ethic from Scripture, locates current debates over homosexuality in that wider context, and explores why the Bible speaks the way it does about same-sex relationships. Fairly presenting both sides in this polarized debate — "traditional" and "revisionist" — Brownson conscientiously analyzes all of the pertinent biblical texts and helpfully identifies "stuck points" in the ongoing debate. In the process, he explores key concepts that inform our understanding of the biblical texts, including patriarchy, complementarity, purity and impurity, honor and shame. Central to his argument is the need to uncover the moral logic behind the text. Written in order to serve and inform the ongoing debate in many denominations over the questions of homosexuality, Brownson's in-depth study will prove a useful resource for Christians who want to form a considered opinion on this important issue.

Gower's use of the persona, the figure of the writer implicated in the text, is the main theme of this book. While it traces the development of Gower's voice through his major works, it concentrates on the dialogue of Amans and Genius in the Confessio Amantis. It argues that Gower negotiates problems of politics and problems of love by means of an analogy between political ethics and the rules of fin amour; Amans and Genius are both drawn from and occupied with amatory and ethical traditions, and their discourse produces a series of attempts to find a coherent and rational union of lover and ruler. The volume also argues that Gower's goal is poetic as well as political: through the personae, Gower's readers experience the pains and pleasures of erotic and social love. Gower's personae voice potential responses to exemplary experience, prompting readers to feel and to judge, and moving them to become better lovers and better rulers. Gower's analogy between fin amour and politics brings the affects of the lover to the action of government, and suggests for both love and rule the moderation that brings peace and joy. Matthew W. Irvin is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Chair of the Medieval Studies Program at Sewanee.

This carefully crafted ebook: "The Complete Works of D. H. Lawrence" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Novels: The White Peacock The Trespasser Sons and Lovers The Rainbow Women in Love The Lost Girl Aaron's Rod Kangaroo The Boy in the Bush The Plumed Serpent Lady Chatterley's Lover The Man Who Died (The Escaped Cock) The Ladybird The Fox The Captain's Doll St Mawr The Virgin and the Gypsy Short Stories: The Prussian Officer and Other Stories: The Prussian Officer The Thorn in the Flesh Daughters of the Vicar A Fragment of Stained Glass The Shades of Spring Second Best The Shadow in the Rose Garden Goose Fair The White Stocking A Sick Collier The Christening Odour of Chrysanthemums England, My England and Other Stories: England, My England Tickets, Please The Blind Man Monkey Nuts Wintry Peacock You Touched Me Samson and Delilah The Primrose Path The Horse Dealer's Daughter Fanny And Annie The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories: The Woman who Rode Away Two Blue Birds Sun Smile The Border Line Jimmy and the Desperate Woman The Last Laugh In Love The Man who Loved Islands Glad Ghosts None of that The Rocking-Horse Winner The Lovely Lady Collected Short Stories Other Stories Poetry: Love Poems and others Amores Look! We have come through! New Poems Bay: A Book of Poems Tortoises Birds, Beasts and Flowers Pansies Nettles Last Poems Plays: The Daughter-in-Law The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd Touch and Go David The Fight for Barbara A Collier's Friday Night The Married Man The Merry-go-round Travel Books: Twilight in Italy and Other Essays Sea and Sardinia Mornings in Mexico Sketches of Etruscan Places and other Italian essays Literary Essays: Study of Thomas Hardy and other essays Studies in Classic American Literature A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover Other Works: Movements in European History Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious Fantasia of the Unconscious Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and other essays Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation The Savage Pilgrimage – A Biography, by Catherine Carswell

With marriage in decline, divorce on the rise, the demise of the nuclear family, and the increase in marriages and adoptions among same-sex partners, it is clear that the structures of kinship in the modern West are in a state of flux. In The Metamorphoses of Kinship, the world-renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier contextualizes these developments, surveying the accumulated experience of humanity with regard to such phenomena as the organization of lines of descent, sexuality and sexual prohibitions. In parallel, Godelier studies the evolution of Western conjugal and familial traditions from their roots in the nineteenth century to the present. The conclusion he draws is that it is never the case that a man and a woman are sufficient on their own to raise a child, and nowhere are relations of kinship or the family the keystone of society. Godelier argues that the changes of the last thirty years do not herald the disappearance or death agony of kinship, but rather its remarkable metamorphosis—one that, ironically, is bringing us closer to the “traditional” societies studied by ethnologists.

In nineteenth-century America, Gillian Silverman contends, reading—and particularly book reading—precipitated intense fantasies of communion. In handling a book, the reader imagined touching and being touched by the people affiliated with that book's narrative world—an author, a character, a fellow reader. This experience often led to a sense of consubstantiality, a fantasy that the reader, the material book, and the imagined other were momentarily merged. Such a fantasy challenges psychological conceptions of discrete subjectivity along with the very notion of corporeal integrity—the idea that we are detached, skin-bound, and autonomously functioning entities. It forces us to envision readers not as liberal subjects, pursuing reading as a means toward privacy, interiority, and individuation, but rather as communal beings inseparable from objects in our psychic and phenomenal world. While theorists have long emphasized the way reading can promote a sense of abstract belonging, Bodies and Books emphasizes the intense somatic bonds that nineteenth-century subjects experienced while reading. Silverman bridges the gap between the cognitive and material effects of reading, arguing that the two worked in tandem, enabling readers to feel deep communion with objects (both human and nonhuman) in the external world. Drawing on the letters and diaries of nineteenth-century readers along with literary works by Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Susan Warner, and others, Silverman explores the book as a technology of intimacy and ponders what nineteenth-century readers might be able to teach us two centuries later.