| Description |
viii, 278 pages, 36 pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Note |
Includes index. |
| Contents |
1. Beginning -- 2. The Gorgeous Gorgon: Women and Power in the Myths of Judith -- 3. Her Virtue Was Vice: Christian Allegory and the Selling of Sex -- 4. Worshipping Women: The Battle of the Sexes in Reformation Europe -- 5. The Monstrous Regiment of Judiths: Power and Gender in the Renaissance -- 6. Hanging's Too Good for Her: Assassins, Tyrants and Executioners -- 7. The Dark Angel: Romantic Criminals and Oriental Others -- 8. Judy and Punch: Marriage and 'Fallen Women' -- 9. Reader, I Murdered Him: Criminality and the Uncanny -- 10. Framing the Femme Fatale: Sexology in the Fin de Siecle -- 11. Judith's List: Identity and the Final Solution -- 12. Woman with a Gun: Terrorism, Power and Paranoia -- 13. Judith the Ripper: Feminists and Serial Killers. |
| Summary |
"The Old Testament story of the widow Judith - the irresistible siren who lured her people's deadly enemy, Holofernes, to his death, beheading him to save Jerusalem - is an enduring cultural myth in Western society. In this book, Margarita Stocker explores the Western fascination with the image of Judith and the abundance of interpretations that have surrounded her at different times from the early Middle Ages to the present. The myth of Judith provides an important key to modern society's view of women and power, she argues. In dealing with the threatening image of a powerful femme fatale who is also a saint, the vested interests of Western culture have deliberately, often deviously, subverted images of sex and death as a way of marginalising women and protecting traditional notions of masculinity."--BOOK JACKET. |
| Subject |
Bible. Judith -- Criticism, interpretation, etc. -- History.
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Judith (Biblical figure)
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Women in the Bible.
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| ISBN |
0300073658 alkaline paper |
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9780300073652 alkaline paper |
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