The chastity belt is one of those objects people have commonly identified with the "dark" Middle Ages. This book analyzes the origin of this myth and demonstrates how a convenient misconception, or rather contorted imagination, of an allegedly historical practice has led to profoundly erroneous interpretations of alleged control mechanisms used by jealous husbands in the Middle Ages.

This book offers the first complete English translation of the poems by the late-medieval German (Tyrolean) Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/1377-1445). Oswald von Wolkenstein was one of the leading poets of his time and created some of the most exciting, experimental, and also deeply religious-conservative poetry of the entire Middle Ages and far beyond. German scholarship and musicologists have long recognized the extraordinary strength and power of Oswald s Middle High German songs, both in terms of his poetic imagery and his musical performance. This book proves Oswald's uvre to be one of the...