Ebook: Naked Before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England

Though Anglo-Saxon England is better known for its penitents than peep-shows, glimpses of unclothed bodies peek through in surprising places in the surviving sources. As the essays that follow demonstrate, the spectacle of the unclothed body, at once scandalous and seductive, exposes more than just bare flesh. Like all representations, those of the naked body partake in larger cultural conversations. If some glimpses of naked forms provoke feelings of shame and embarrassment, others signal defiance and triumph, and still others figure as the ambiguous and passing cipher at the crux of a riddling joke. While the body in general occupies an important site at the intersections of many discourses, the naked body, because it so readily captures both attention and censure, can provoke the reevaluation of those discourses in ways that the clothed body cannot.