TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hilbrand Adema
PY  - 2026
CY  - Berlin, Germany
PB  - Peter Lang Verlag
JF  - Mediaevistik
IS  - 1
VL  - 39
SN  - 2199-806X
TI  - Elizabeth Eva Leach Medieval Sex Lives: The Sounds of Courtly Intimacy on the Francophone Borders. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2023, 299 pp.
DO  - 10.3726/med.2026.01.132
UR  - https://www.peterlang.com/document/1748876
N2  - Elizabeth Eva Leach’s Medieval Sex Lives offers a bold rethinking of Bodleian Library MS Douce 308 (D 308, probably 15th century), a chansonnier without musical notation but rich in lyric repertory. Leach argues that the manuscript circulated “sexual scripts” – patterns of words, gestures, and scenarios through which aristocratic audiences could learn, rehearse, and embody erotic roles (Chapter 2). Even without notation, she demonstrates that the manuscript preserves traces of a “sounding culture” in which song, memory, and bodily performance were inseparable from intimacy. Her method blends close reading, codicology, and performance theory with selective use of psychoanalysis and queer theory.
ER  -