Golden Lovers

Courtly Love Undressed

Clothing was used in the Middle Ages to mark religious, military, and chivalric orders, lepers, and prostitutes. The ostentatious display of luxury dress more specifically served as a means of self-definition for members of the ruling elite and the courtly lovers among them. In Courtly Love Undressed, E. Jane Burns unfolds the rich display of costly garments worn by amorous partners in literary texts and other cultural documents in the French High Middle Ages. Burns "reads through clothes" in lyric, romance, and didactic literary works, vernacular sermons, and sumptuary laws to show how courtly attire is used to negotiate desire, sexuality, and symbolic space as well as social class. Reading through clothes reveals that the expression of female desire, so often effaced in courtly lyric and romance, can be registered in the poetic deployment of fabric and adornment, and that gender is often configured along a sartorial continuum, rather than in terms of naturally derived categories of woman and man. The symbolic identification of the court itself as a hybrid crossing place between Europe and the East also emerges through Burns's reading of literary allusions to the trade, travel, and pilgrimage that brought luxury cloth to France.

Women Love Wrestling

“Very well written, I am really enjoying it. I have been so impressed by the writers and their passion for the subject” – Mick Foley, wrestling legend and bestselling author "Expert contributions that unexpectedly and thoroughly cover a treasure trove of topics. This reader was euphoric over the amount of subject matter jam-packed into this important and long overdue collection" - Jamie Hemmings, Book Editor for SlamWrestling.net "The quality of writing at its best was really good, a lot to think about. A flat out really good read." - Bruce Mitchell, Senior Columnist - Pro Wrestling Torch 99.9% of professional wrestling books are written by men about male performers in a male-dominated business. This book aims to help correct the balance, giving a voice to women and fans of women’s wrestling, showing women in the ring are just as captivating to watch and that female fans are just as passionate. Women Love Wrestling is a collection of writing from women and about women in wrestling, written by fans, wrestlers, podcasters, promoters, journalists, culture critics, PhDs and academics. Women Love Wrestling is a mix of wrestling history, personal stories and studies of professional wrestling. We focus on women’s wrestling of course, but include stories from the wider world, including lost Victorian legends and reflections on how wrestling can be compared to the masterpieces of Shakespeare. Learn about how to watch joshi, how women train to wrestle, how promoting all-women shows requires a different approach, how wrestling fandom creates gender-bending art and cosplay, the history of GLOW, AJW, Shimmer and EVE, issues with diversity, the slow progress being made with gender equality and more thanks to our diverse team of writers. The profits from this book are donated to RAINN and Women's Aid

Love-songs