Sacred Eroticism, Rapturous Anguish: Christianity's Penitent Prostitutes and the Vexation of Allegory, 1370-1608

Author / Editor
King, Laura Severt.

Title
Sacred Eroticism, Rapturous Anguish: Christianity's Penitent Prostitutes and the Vexation of Allegory, 1370-1608

Published
Dissertation Abstracts International 54 (1994): 3757A.

Description
Among the handful of converted whores, Mary Magdalene is best known in late medieval writing through the homily "De maria Magdalena" (which Chaucer translated) and the Digby play. These works reveal remarkably literal physicality in which carnal desire appears to merge with spiritual, as reflected in BD, LGW, Pity, and ShT.

Chaucer Subjects
Chaucerian Apocrypha.
Book of the Duchess.
Legend of Good Women.
Complaint unto Pity.
Shipman and His Tale.