Buch, Englisch, 424 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 796 g
And Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry
Buch, Englisch, 424 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 796 g
ISBN: 978-0-19-026711-7
Verlag: OXFORD UNIV PR
According to north Indian legend, there was once a Shah whose daughter was to marry a minister of the state of Sialkot. When the King heard of the girl's great beauty he tried to seduce her, but failed; he then planted his signet ring in her bed to trick her fiancé into thinking that he'd spoiled her chastity. Years later, the minister learned of the King's trickery, and decided to beg the forgiveness of the woman he had refused to marry--however, on his way to see her he fell dead. The Shah's daughter found out about his death, and her own vindication in his eyes, and went to lie with him on his funeral pyre--the site of their cremation is now a temple where the goddess Shila Mata is worshipped.
The themes of this story--the spiteful king, the innocent woman, trickery, adultery (in this case presumed), and, above all, the ring symbolizing a sexual encounter--reverberate across time and cultures, so much so that you might think you've heard this story before, even if you've never heard of the goddess whose origin it describes. Why are sex and jewelry, particularly rings, so often connected? Why do rings keep appearing in stories about marriage and adultery, love and betrayal, loss and recovery, identity and masquerade? What is the mythology that makes finger rings symbols of true (or, as the case may be, untrue) love? In seeking answers to these questions, each chapter of this book, like a separate charm on a charm bracelet, considers a different constellation of stories. Most of the rings in the stories originally belong to men; indeed, just about all the jewelry that women have, they get from men. But it is the women who put the jewelry to work in the plots, and that is what this book is about.
Beginning with a series of her own personal anecdotes about jewelry, Wendy Doniger expertly unfolds the cultural and historical significance of rings. The book does not move in a linear fashion but expands outward, as if from a prism, touching on ancient Sanskrit myth, Celtic lore, fairytales, literature, and modern song lyrics, to form a collection of stories as multifaceted as a diamond. The stories are all different but linked through a common cluster of meanings: the mutual imitation of real and fake, legal and illegal, marital and extra-marital jewelry; the circular form of rings and bracelets, miming the circle of eternity, which persists in the face of human ephemera. The Ring of Truth tells the story of jewelry that preserves (and sometimes erases) true and false memories, making promises that come true and that lie.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Freizeitsoziologie, Konsumsoziologie, Alltagssoziologie, Populärkultur
- Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
- Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft
- Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte Religionen der Antike
- Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
Weitere Infos & Material
- Preface: My Family Jewels, and Other Tall Tales
- Introduction: The Signifying Ring
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1: Marriage Rings (and Adultery Rings)
- Rings in History
- The Meaning of Rings
- The Signet Ring
- The Ring on Her Finger
- The Sexual Ring
- Hans Carvel's Ring
- The Vagina Monologues
- The Rings of Wives and Courtesans
- Chapter 2: The Ring Fished from the Ocean
- The Story in the Fish
- Solomon's Ring
- Polycrates' Ring
- The Bishop of Glasgow's Salmon
- The (Not-So) Fortunate Farmer's Daughter
- The Child and the Ring in the Water
- The Family Romance
- The Pope's Ring and the Fish
- Rings of Incest
- Cinderella's Ring
- Cinderella's Fish
- Shakespeare's Rings I: The Lost Child
- Pericles
- The Winter'sTale
- The Ring (and Child) in the Fish in the News
- The Token Rings of Lost Children
- Chapter 3: Shakuntala and the Ring of Memory
- Rings in Ancient India
- Sita's Jewels
- Ratnavali, the Lady with the Necklace
- The Rejection of Shakuntala
- The Ring of the Bodhisattva
- The Recognition of Shakuntala
- The Return of the Repressed
- The Lost and Found of Rings
- Chapter 4: Rings of Forgetfulness in Medieval European Romances
- The Man who Forgot his Wife when he Lost his Ring
- Yvain, The Knight of the Lion, and the Lady of the Fountain
- Lancelot and Guinevere
- Tristan and Isolde
- The Ring on the Statue
- Shakespeare's Rings II: The Lying Ring
- Cymbeline
- The Merchant of Venice
- Chapter 5: Siegfried's Ring and Wagner's Ring
- The Man who Lost his Ring when he Forgot his Wife
- Siegfried and Brünnhilde
- Stage One: Thidreks Saga
- Stage Two: Völsunga Saga
- Stage Three: Nibelungenlied
- Stage Four: Ibsen's The Vikings at Helgeland
- Stage Five: Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung
- The Twilight of the Ring
- Wieland the Smith
- The Rehabilitation of Cads
- The Alibi Ring: Oxytocin
- Chapter 6: Pregnant Riddles and Clever Wives
- The Man Who Wouldn't Sleep with his Wife
- Until She had Borne Him a Son
- Muladeva and the Brahmin's Daughter
- Other Indian Variants
- Tamar and Judah
- The Clever Wife in the Decameron
- Shakespeare's Rings III: The Riddle of the Ring
- All's Well That Ends Well
- Is All Well That Ends Well?
- Chapter 7: The Rape of the Clever Wife
- Rape and Rejection
- Rape in Menander and Terence
- The Dream Ring
- How Budur Almost Raped her Husband Qamar
- The Vizier's Daughter
- Parental Imprinting and Uncertain Fathers
- Chapter 8: The Affair of the Diamond Necklace
- Marie Antoinette and the Scene in the Bower
- The Official Trial
- Trial by Libel
- Alexandre Dumas
- Fact and Fiction
- Beaumarchais and The Marriage of Figaro
- The Ghosts of Versailles
- Asimov's Norby and the Queen's Necklace
- Chapter 9: The Slut Assumption in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- Chains in Mansfield Park
- Jewry and Jewelry in Daniel Deronda
- The "Memorial" Turquoise Necklace
- The "Poisonous" Diamond Necklace
- The "Memorable" Ring of Lost Fathers
- Guy de Maupassant and Henry James
- W. Somerset Maugham and China Seas
- Twentieth Century Films
- Random Harvest
- Vertigo (and Gaslight)
- The Earrings of Madame de
- Real Jewelry and False Women
- Chapter 10: Are Diamonds A Woman's Best Friend?
- The Symbolic Baggage of Baguettes
- Who Said, "Forever"? Anita Loos, Leo Robin, De Beers, and N. W. Ayer
- The Divorce Ring and the Apology Ring
- The Anti-Myth: Diabolical Diamonds
- Take Back Your Ring: The Legal View
- Hard Values
- The Rebellion of Twenty-First Century Women
- The Ties that Bind
- Chapter 11: Two Conclusions, on Money and Myth
- I Money: The Lap of Luxury
- II Myth: Recognition, Rings, Reason and Rationality
- The Recognition of Myth and the Myth of Recognition
- Repetition and Originality
- The Colluding Audience
- The Ring to the Rescue
- Sexing Texts
- Reason and Rationality
- The Ring Runs Rings Around Reason
- Rationing Rationality
- The Triumph of Myth over Reason
