Dr Eleanor Janega

Dr Eleanor Janega is a medieval historian specialising in social history with an emphasis on sex, cities, and apocalyptic thought. She teaches at the London School of Economics, and blogs at going-medieval.com, see website link in profile, Her first popular medieval history, The Middle Ages: A Graphic History, will be out with Icon Press next year.

Dr Eleanor Janega

Dr Eleanor's Articles

Medieval porn and historical depictions of sex

When people think about the Middle Ages sex, medieval porn isn’t usually the first thing they think of. There’s a lot of good reasons for this but one of the biggest is that the medieval period—which runs from the ‘fall of Rome’ in 476 to the sixteenth century was a really long time ago. The sources that survive to...

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Medieval sex, what was sex really like In the Middle Ages?

If someone says the words “sex history”, the Middle Ages probably aren’t the first thing that springs to mind. The term usually conjures up the old myth about Victorians inventing vibrators to masturbate hysterical women or images of Masters and Johnson finally applying a “scientific” approach to sexuality. After all, how can the overtly religious and misogynist world of the...

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