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humoral theory

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LHMP entry

LHMP #148 Velasco 2000 The Lieutenant Nun: Transgenderism, Lesbian Desire and Catalina de Erauso

Preface

This book looks at how Catalina de Erauso’s story has been “constructed, interpreted, marketed and consumed” in the 17-20th centuries. Velasco identifies Catalina as a “transgenderist” (that is, someone who engages in transgender performance without necessarily having transgender identity) and uses she/her pronouns as the book is examining how Catalina’s image was used (the image of a woman performing masculinity) rather than interpreting what Catalina’s own understanding might have been.

Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #69c Traub 2002 - The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Chapter 2)

In this chapter, Traub looks at medical views of female erotic pleasure, the understanding of orgasm, and the “rediscovery of the clitoris”. She opens with the story of the Spaniard Catalina de Erauso who dressed and passed as a man through many adventures both in Spain and the New World, but returned to living as a woman when convicted of murder in order to escape execution. One key factor in her plea was her status as an “intact virgin”. This arbitrary physical state was considered the crucial attribute of “innocence” despite her admitted history of erotic encounters with women.

Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #102h Habib 2009 "On the Literature of Grinders and their Grinding" in Tifashi, Ahmad Ibn Yusuf (c. 1250)

He calls grinding an “illness” and offers various possible causes, including having an “inverted womb” (a variant on the clitoral hypertrophy motif), or a mis-match between the shape of a woman’s vagina and the shape of the penis. Another possible cause he lists is the mother’s diet during breast-feeding. Some women pick up the habit from having sex with concubines. Another explanation is that grinding is a natural appetite, derived from a variant of humoral theory.

Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #37 - Bullough & Brundage 1996 Handbook of Medieval Sexuality

Sexual Norms

Payer, Pierre J. – “Confession and the Study of Sex in the Middle Ages” - Reviews the usefulness of penitential manuals for the study of sexual activity and attitudes thereto. This article talks about issues and problems of this genre as a source but does not go into detail on content. (Content relating to female same-sex activity has been discussed in other LHMP entries.) There is an extensive bibliography of both primary and secondary sources on penitentials

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