Document Type
Review
Publication Date
2008
Abstract
Ms. Cuffel works with sources in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Latin, and more than a few of the various medieval vernaculars, which has to be somewhat intimidating to a reviewer whose connection with the me- dieval is Old Icelandic and Old English and whose connection with Hebrew was via the whip of Bar Mitzvah and who learned all the words needed to vaccinate anally thousands of chickens in the lul, the chick- enhouse, on a kibbutz way back in 1964. I thus have to take the author at her word except, I suppose, when it comes to knowledge of the re- vulsion occasioned by fecundity and rot, of the horror of skin gone bad, of the misbehavior of the orifices of human bodies, their dis- charges—semen, menstrual blood, mucus, saliva, vomit, excrement, af- terbirth, and such; and I can also trust to my own knowledge of other unfortunate members of God’s creation—pigs, snakes, toads, rats, maggots, even, alas, dogs—who are enlisted as disgusting avatars of hu- mans who have let the side down.
Recommended Citation
Miller, William I. Review of Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic, by Alexandra Cuffel. Medievalia et Humanistica no. 34 (2008): 161-165.
Comments
All rights reserved. Please contact the publisher for permission to copy, distribute or reprint. Pages 161-165, Review of Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic, by Alexandra Cuffel, by Miller, William I., 2008, reproduced by permission of Rowman & Littlefield.