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Full Description
This enlightening narrative takes a look at the wedding night—its origins, history, customs, cultural expressions, and fictional representations through the ages.
Though just outside of public view, the wedding night is loaded with expectation and consequence. The Wedding Night: A Popular History is an entertaining, accessible, touching, and humorous volume that looks at the previously unexplored topic of wedding history "between the sheets." Covering a kaleidoscopic array of cultural expressions, this unique study zooms in on what's quintessential and shares insights into the history of intimacy through the ages.
The book traces the formalization of the wedding night in the ancient Near East and classical world, provides many examples of historically significant unions in European and American history, and describes the lively variety of traditions leading up to the present. Spicing their narrative with many piquant quotes from contemporary sources, the authors explore the rich cultural context for the wedding night—processions, royal rituals, apparel, food-related traditions, and pranks—throughout Europe and America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Separate chapters examine sex guides, jokes, and the bed as a special conjugal space.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: It Takes Two to ...
Chapter 2: The Classical Three-Step: Establishing the Wedding Pattern
Chapter 3: Virginity to Consummation: The Rite of Passage
Chapter 4: Proceeding to the Royal Bedroom
Chapter 5: Merriment and Pranks
Chapter 6: Tobias Nights
Chapter 7: Early American Wedding Nights
Chapter 8: The Spousals of Native Americans
Chapter 9: Presidential Wedding Nights
Chapter 10: Elopement
Chapter 11: The Honeymoon
Chapter 12: Guide for the Perplexed
Chapter 13: Between the Sheets
Chapter 14: The Bride Wore ... Lingerie
Chapter 15: The Food of Love
Chapter 16: Arabian and Other Nights
Chapter 17: An Occasion for Mirth
Chapter 18: Do Not Disturb
Appendix: Wedding Nights on the Silver Screen
Index
