The ring of truth and other myths of sex and jewelry /

Doniger, Wendy,

The ring of truth and other myths of sex and jewelry / Wendy Doniger. - xxi, 397 pages ; 24 cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Machine generated contents note: 1.Marriage Rings (and Adultery Rings)
Rings in History
The Meaning of Rings
The Signet Ring
The Ring on Her Finger
The Sexual Ring
Hans Carvel's Ring
The Vagina Monologues
The Rings of Wives and Courtesans
2.The Ring Fished from the Ocean
The Story in the Fish
Solomon's Ring
Polycrates's Ring
The Bishop of Glasgow's Salmon
The (Not-So-) Fortunate Farmer's Daughter
The Child and the Ring in the Water
The Family Romance
The Pope's Ring and the Fish
Rings of Incest
Cinderella's Ring
Cinderella's Fish
Shakespeare's Rings I: The Lost Child
The Ring (and Child) in the Fish in the News
The Token Rings of Lost Children
3.Shakuntala and the Ring of Memory
Rings in Ancient India
Sita's Jewels
Ratnavali, the Lady with the Necklace
The Rejection of Shakuntala
The Ring of the Bodhisattva
The Recognition of Shakuntala
The Return of the Repressed
Contents note continued: The Lost and Found of Rings
4.Rings of Forgetfulness in Medieval European Romances
The Man Who Forgot His Wife When He Lost His Ring
Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, and the Lady of the Fountain
Lancelot and Guinevere
Tristan and Isolde
The Ring on the Statue
Shakespeare's Rings II: The Lying Ring
5.Siegfried's Ring and Wagner's Ring
Siegfried and Brunnhilde
The Man Who Lost His Ring When He Forgot His Wife
The Twilight of the Ring
Wieland the Smith
The Rehabilitation of Cads
The Alibi Ring: Oxytocin
6.Pregnant Riddles and Clever Wives
The Man Who Wouldn't Sleep with His Wife Until She Had Borne Him a Son
Muladeva and the Brahmin's Daughter
Other Indian Variants
Tamar and Judah
The Clever Wife in the Decameron
Shakespeare's Rings III: The Riddle of the Ring
Is All Well That Ends Well?
7.The Rape of the Clever Wife
Rape and Rejection
Menander and Terence
The Dream Ring
Contents note continued: How Budur Almost Raped Her Husband Qamar
The Vizier's Daughter
Parental Imprinting and Uncertain Fathers
8.The Affair of the Diamond Necklace
Marie Antoinette and the Scene in the Bower
The Official Trial
Trial by Libel
Alexandre Dumas
Fact and Fiction
Beaumarchais and The Marriage of Figaro
The Ghosts of Versailles
Asimov's Norby and the Queen's Necklace
9.The Slut Assumption in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Chains in Mansfield Park
Jewry and Jewelry in Daniel Deronda
Guy de Maupassant and Henry James
W. Somerset Maugham and China Seas
Twentieth-Century Films
Real Jewelry and False Women
10.Are Diamonds a Woman's Best Friend?
The Symbolic Baggage of Baguettes
Who Said, "Forever"? Anita Loos, Leo Robin, De Beers, and N. W. Ayer
The Divorce Ring and the Apology Ring
The Anti-Myth: Diabolical Diamonds
Take Back Your Ring: The Legal View
Hard Values
Contents note continued: The Rebellion of Twenty-First-Century Women
The Ties That Bind
11.Two Conclusions, on Money and Myth
I Money: The Lap of Luxury
II Myth: Recognition, Rings, Reason and Rationality
The Ring to the Rescue
Sexing Texts
Reason and Rationality
The Ring Runs Rings around Reason.


According to north Indian legend, there was once a Shah whose daughter was to marry a minister of the state of Sialkot. When the King heard of the girl's great beauty he tried to seduce her, but failed; he then planted his signet ring in her bed to trick her fiance into thinking that he'd spoiled her chastity. Years later, the minister learned of the King's trickery, and decided to beg the forgiveness of the woman he had refused to marry-however, on his way to see her he fell dead. The Shah's daughter found out about his death, and her own vindication in his eyes, and went to lie with him on his funeral pyre-the site of their cremation is now a temple where the goddess Shila Mata is worshipped. 0The themes of this story-the spiteful king, the innocent woman, trickery, adultery (in this case presumed), and, above all, the ring symbolizing a sexual encounter-reverberate across time and cultures, so much so that you might think you've heard this story before, even if you've never heard of the goddess whose origin it describes. Why are sex and jewelry, particularly rings, so often connected?0Why do rings keep appearing in stories about marriage and adultery, love and betrayal, loss and recovery, identity and masquerade? What is the mythology that makes finger rings symbols of true (or, as the case may be, untrue) love? In seeking answers to these questions, each chapter of this book, like a separate charm on a charm bracelet, considers a different constellation of stories.

9789386338860 (hbk.) 9780190267117 (pbk.)

2016055313


Rings--Folklore.
Rings in literature.

398.28 DON / 011205