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"Chastity"
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The medieval chastity belt : a myth-making process
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.
eBook
Measure for measure
Measure for Measure generates much debate and is strikingly modern in its treatment of justice, the limits of authority, surveillance, sexual politics and gender identity. This introductory guide to the play offers a scene-by-scene theatrically aware commentary, contextual documents, a brief history of the text and first performance, studies of outstanding and influential performances, a survey of film and TV adaptation, a wide sampling of critical opinion and annotated further reading. --From publisher's description.
Book
Disgraceful Matters
Looking beyond the familiar trappings of the cult of female chastity—such as hagiographies of widows and chastity shrines--in late imperial China, this book explores the cult's political significance and practical ramifications in everyday life during the eighteenth century. In the first full-length study of the subject, Janet Theiss examines a vast number of laws, legal cases, regulations, and policies to illustrate the social and political processes through which female virtue was defined, enforced, and contested. Along the way, she provides rich details of social life and cultural practices among ordinary Chinese people through narratives of criminal cases of sexual assault, harassment, adultery, and domestic violence.
eBook
Pureté et impureté des Vestales
This article deals with the Vestals, virgin priestesses consecrated to the goddess Vesta, and their purity and impurity. These virgins, endowed with a specific legal and religious status, carried out rites of purification of the city. Moreover, through their main mission, the maintenance of the sacred fire, they ensured the continuance of Rome. They represent the perfect example of Roman feminine virtues: chastity (castitas) and pudicity (pudicitia). So, these priestesses embodied both moral and religious purity. However, they can also symbolize impurity. Indeed, two crimes could be committed by the Vestal, fire-extinguishing and the most serious of them, the incestum, the loss of virginity. The Vestal then became impure: she had been corrupted (corrupta), polluted. The punishment of this crime was death and the context, in which it takes place, expresses the danger associated with this incestum. Thus, the aim of this paper is to emphasize the importance of the pure-impure dichotomy in the construction and representation of the cult of Vesta and especially of its priestesses.
Journal Article
Virtue and Progressive Ideology: Destabilizing Social Class in Richardson’s Pamela and Fielding’s Joseph Andrews
This essay investigates Richardson and Fielding’s projection of social mobility and the intrinsic conditionality of virtue and honor that is essential for social transformation. Maintaining a virtuous status among morally corrupt people destabilizes the established stereotypical view of social hierarchy and incites some aristocratic people’s passion for their servants, violating the consolidation of social class boundaries. Pursuant to the principles of the progressive ideology, some members of the upper class authoritatively thwart endeavors for upward mobility, except for social progression coupled with moral standing and good reputation that is propitiously received with communal acceptance and approbation. Therefore, the novels entail that values of good ethics, chastity, and piety become fundamental requirements for maintaining and enhancing social standing regardless of any prospective deterioration in the material situation. Both novels resist the ideology that honor as virtue is an inherited value that is vested in a certain class by ancestry and heredity. Contrary to this supposition, both contexts associate moral corruption with social degradation and document it historically to reform sinful practices and immodesty. Finally, the authors aspire for ideal societies where the holders of virtue and honor should be rewarded for resisting moral corruption, the allure of materialism, and the greed of capitalism.
Journal Article
Celibacy, Chastity and Self-Cultivation in the Thought of Jesuits and Chinese Catholics in Late Ming and Early Qing China
This article examines Catholic celibacy from the late Ming to early Qing dynasty, revealing how Jesuit missionaries and Chinese Catholics interpreted and advocated for chastity. It highlights how missionaries such as Matteo Ricci and Giulio Aleni connected chastity with the ethical knowledge of self-cultivation and the doctrine of salvation, while adapting it to Chinese culture through Confucian concepts like subduing one’s self. The article also explores the conflicts and integrations of chastity ideals among different intellectual traditions, such as the critiques by Buddhist monk Yunqi Zhuhong and Confucian scholar Xu Dashou, as well as how supporters like Yang Tingyun and Zhu Zongyuan reconciled Christian chastity with Confucian ideals of self-restraint and virtuous conduct.
Journal Article
The chastity of amoebae: re-evaluating evidence for sex in amoeboid organisms
Amoebae are generally assumed to be asexual. We argue that this view is a relict of early classification schemes that lumped all amoebae together inside the ‘lower’ protozoa, separated from the ‘higher’ plants, animals and fungi. This artificial classification allowed microbial eukaryotes, including amoebae, to be dismissed as primitive, and implied that the biological rules and theories developed for macro-organisms need not apply to microbes. Eukaryotic diversity is made up of 70+ lineages, most of which are microbial. Plants, animals and fungi are nested among these microbial lineages. Thus, theories on the prevalence and maintenance of sex developed for macro-organisms should in fact apply to microbial eukaryotes, though the theories may need to be refined and generalized (e.g. to account for the variation in sexual strategies and prevalence of facultative sex in natural populations of many microbial eukaryotes). We use a revised phylogenetic framework to assess evidence for sex in several amoeboid lineages that are traditionally considered asexual, and we interpret this evidence in light of theories on the evolution of sex developed for macro-organisms. We emphasize that the limited data available for many lineages coupled with natural variation in microbial life cycles overestimate the extent of asexuality. Mapping sexuality onto the eukaryotic tree of life demonstrates that the majority of amoeboid lineages are, contrary to popular belief, anciently sexual, and that most asexual groups have probably arisen recently and independently. Additionally, several unusual genomic traits are prevalent in amoeboid lineages, including cyclic polyploidy, which may serve as alternative mechanisms to minimize the deleterious effects of asexuality.
Journal Article
Chastity in Temperance’s Images
Ancient thinking conceived Temperance as the enemy of pleasures and excesses, mainly bodily pleasures. This idea was the source of Temperance’s depictions in the Middle Ages. Attributes such as the torch and jug, castle, tower, bit, salamander, ermine, or the presence of Cupid accompany Temperance’s personification as controlling elements of bodily pleasures. The combinations of attributes relative to chastity give rise to two different iconographic types. These iconographic types translate theoretical considerations about this virtue visually.
Journal Article