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The Gender of Grace: Impotence, Servitude, and Manliness in the Fifth‐Century West
Author(s) -
Cooper Kate,
Leyser Conrad
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
gender and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-0424
pISSN - 0953-5233
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0424.00199
Subject(s) - lust , saint , masculinity , reading (process) , original sin , philosophy , pace , sociology , gender studies , theology , art , art history , linguistics , geodesy , geography
This essay attempts to stage an encounter between post‐Foucauldian approaches to masculinity in the ancient world on the one hand, and the reading of Augustine of Hippo's idea of Original Sin as a disjunction of the will, put forward in Robert Markus's Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Saint Augustine . Emphasis is placed on Book XIV of the City of God , where Augustine emblematises the result of Original Sin not – pace Foucault – through an image of irrepressible lust, but rather through that of the impotent male, humiliated by his inability to embody his desire.