Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University College London : A - History of Art
Seeing Sodomy in the Bibles moralisées
Context and contribution: Speculum, the journal of the Medieval Academy of America, is the most significant interdisciplinary periodical in the field of medieval studies, with a current print circulation in excess of 6500 copies. It is open to contributions in all fields studying the Western Middle Ages.
Research imperative and significance: Sodomy’s discursive incoherence has long been noted by historians of sexuality. Mills' article asks what happens when the concept is visualized in medieval art, focusing on a group of manuscripts, known as the Bibles moralisées, which were produced between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries for members of the French royal family. This is the first study to analyse depictions of sodomy across all seven principal Bibles moralisées. It demonstrates the inconsistency with which terms such as ‘sodomy’ and ‘sodomite’ are applied in the manuscripts and considers the relevance of recent critiques of the notion of ‘heteronormativity’ to interpretation.
