The chastity belt is one of those objects people have commonly identified with the 'dark' Middle Ages. This book analyzes the origin of this myth and demonstrates how a convenient misconception, or contorted imagination, of an allegedly historical practice has led to profoundly flawed interpretations of control mechanisms used by jealous husbands.

Autorentext
ALBERCHT CLASSEN is a medievalist in the Department of German Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.

Inhalt
The Creation of a Myth: The Flat Earth Theory as a Foretaste of the Hermeneutic Problem The Nature of Mythical Thinking The Chastity Belt Modern Myth-Making The Medieval Chastity Belt in Popular Opinion and Its Sources Myth-Making Stage I: Alcide Bonneau (1836-1904) Myth-Making Stage II: Dr. Caufeynon (1904 and 1905) Myth-Making Stage III: Eric John Dingwall (1923) Myth-Making Stage IV: Esar Levine (1931) Myth-Making Stage V: Lexica, Encyclopedia, and Other Reference Works Early German Encyclopedists The Chastity Belt in Ersch's and Gruber's Encyclopedia The Cultural Historian Alwin Schulz The Anthropologist Heinrich Ploss The Evidence Produced by A. M. Pachinger The Bilder-Lexikon: The Allegedly Conclusive and Authoritative Summary The History of Women in the Middle Ages: Max Bauer's Theories Popular Encyclopedias A Modern Breakthrough? Alexander Schulz's Contribution Modern Myth-Making The Dilettante Art Historian Eduard Fuchs Modern Museum Pieces Histories of Morality and Studies of Popular Culture The Chastity Belt in Early-Modern Art: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Froben Christof von Zimmern: A Late-Medieval Chronicler Who Knows Nothing about the Chastity Belt Gianfranceso Straparola: Almost Obscene, but Ignorant of the Chastity Belt History of Fashion The Chastity Belt as a Theme in the Discourse of the Enlightenment The Encyclopedists Voltaire: The Eternal Satirist - Not a Testimony for the Historical Chastity Belt Johann Gottfried Schnabel The Chastity Belt in European Dictionaries and Reference Works Sexology Modern Reference Works on Eroticism and Sex Recent Research on the Chastity Belt: The Evidence of Art History and the History of Everyday Life The Literary and Historical Evidence, Revisited The Chastity Belt in Italian Renaissance Literature The Useless Chastity Belt in Cornazano's Proverbii in Facetie The Motif of the Chastity Belt in Medieval Welsh Literature: 'Sir' Hywel of Builth Francesco II (Novell) di Carrara, Duke of Padua - the AllegedInventor of the Chastity Belt The Elusive Chastity Belt in Medieval and Early-Modern Literature Renaissance and Baroque Literature and Arts The Chastity Belt in Eighteenth-Century Art Modern Art Another Myth: The Jus primae noctis, or the Droit du cuissage (Droit du seigneur) The Nature of Myths Revisited