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.

"In this huge project, Professor Classen has dared to tread on ground often shunned by many scholars and manages to make this book quite delightful in some of its surprising literary discoveries. His research is thorough, his prose readable and enjoyable, the subject captivating." - Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching"Classen's analysis of the mythology of the chastity belt is nothing short of brilliant. His dissection of the literary and iconographic evidence from the late Middle Ages to the twentieth century is exhaustive and highly illuminating. By surveying texts in a wide range of languages, he demonstrates the longevity of a mythic notion with no historical substance. In the process, he sheds profound light on the images about sexuality and purity in medieval literature and art, radically misunderstood in the modern period. This book is to be recommended to specialists in medieval and early modern culture as much as to those generally interested in the capacity of myths to shape and distort our understanding of sexual identity." - Constant J. Mews, Monash University

"In this tour-de-force, Classen explodes the myth of the medieval chastity belt, but he also does more. He reveals how the myth came into existence and how it grew over time. In doing so, he has written a witty and fascinating piece of intellectual and social history which transcends the boundary between the medieval and modern and is exemplary in its scholarship and balance." - WilliamChester Jordan, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University

"What a delight! With humor, erudition, and afine sense of history's changing mind-sets, Classen takes the reader on a wonderful and surprising journey into a realm where academics often fear to tread. Many amodernscholarmay be a bit chagrined by Classen's research and results, but wholly captivated; and the medievalist will surelysmile." - G. Ronald Murphy, SJ, Georgetown University

"The chastity belt is a bizarre product of the modern imagination, which tirelessly dreams up medieval weirdnesses. Classen's book is a riveting odyssey through the grand-guignol-visions and museum fabrications inspired by the idea of the chastity belt. Classen's research is superbly thorough, his prose readable, the subject endlessly interesting. This book reveals more about the modern imagination than medieval barbarity." - C. Stephen Jaeger, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign"Classen s book is a great accomplishment. His argumentation demonstrates not only a profound knowledge of a large corpus of sources in multiple languages, but also a high methodological level of reflection. One can only hope that medieval scholarship will produce more studies like this one that in the best sense of the word serves scholarly enlightenment." - Wissenschaftlicher Literaturanzeiger

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