In Obscene Pedagogies, Carissa M. Harris investigates the relationship between obscenity, gender, and pedagogy in Middle English and Middle Scots literary texts from 1300 to 1580 to show how sexually explicit and defiantly vulgar speech taught readers and listeners about sexual behavior and consent.

Through innovative close readings of literary texts including erotic lyrics, single-woman's songs, debate poems between men and women, Scottish insult poetry battles, and The Canterbury Tales, Harris demonstrates how through its transgressive charge and galvanizing shock value, obscenity taught audiences about gender, sex, pleasure, and power in ways both positive and harmful. Harris's own voice, proudly witty and sharply polemical, inspires the reader to address these medieval texts with an eye on contemporary issues of gender, violence, and misogyny.

About the Author

Carissa M. Harris is Associate Professor of English at Temple University.

Reviews

Harris is an astute close reader of Late Middle English obscenity.

* Times Higher Education *

In Obscene Pedagogies, Carissa M. Harris offers an energetic and incisive analysis of medieval narratives and current affairs that turn on the transgressive power of obscenity. Bold and stylish writing, exemplary close readings, and provocative takes on familiar texts make Obscene Pedagogies a book that will richly reward undergraduate readers.

* The Review of English Studies *

There is a lot to commend in this book. Aside from its vigorous and energetic writing and the sheer density of insights, its overall approach is also worthy of note.

* Modern Philology *

This book marks a rare-but, one hopes, not for long-example of scholarship that employs skillful literary and cultural analysis to enlarge understanding of enduring social justice problems.... Harris's work is valuable for her insights about discourses surrounding sexual violence in the late Middle Ages. It is equally valuable for how she teaches her audiences about the diversity of ways sexual violence can be perceived, deployed, taught, experienced, and resisted in the Middle Ages and in the present moment.... It is a book that should not be restricted to the shelves of medievalists.

* Studies in the Age of Chaucer *

In her meticulously argued new book, Carissa Harris shows that obscenity was used to convey vastly different lessons about sex and ethics in medieval literature.... Dirty words tell us plenty about power. They show us who can speak, enjoy or censor language. They also point to those who are violated, brutalized, silenced. But there is a playful side to obscenity.... Harris's compelling study shows that obscene language can be vicious or, in the right beds and in the right books, dedicated to pleasure.

* London Review of Books *

Harris's book is a bold step forward, as well as a model of exemplary medievalist and feminist scholarship.

* Speculum *


Awards
Winner of Best First Book of Feminist Scholarship on the Middle Ages 2020 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9781501730405
Author Carissa M. Harris
Format Hardback
Page Count 306
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 27mm