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ÉTUDES ET ESSAIS

Le corps à la lettre

ou les quatre femmes de Jacob
Claudine Vassas
p. 11-40

Abstracts

The Body to the Letter, or Jacob's Four Wives. -- The story of Jacob's marriage, a founding episode in Genesis, has been the subject of many a commentary in the Jewish tradition in Europe. Lying between the initial text and the contemporary commentaries on it, rites as well as still current practices and beliefs have given new twists and turns to the story. Even though the Jewish tradition of commentary has made glosses about each detail in the story, the interpretation is still open. In the book of Genesis, which attempts to advance both monotheism and monogamy as a single cause, the marriage with two sisters, doubled by their servants, has a special place. Bigamy and incest, deception and mistakes, exchanges of partners, substitutions, and even selling and buying all enter into Rachel's and Leah's struggle to unite both love and fertility. This ancient story of "fertile" or "sterile" women, incarnated by figures endowed with physical and personality traits and with a special destiny, can also be interpreted as the passage toward disturbing forms of desire.

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References

Bibliographical reference

Claudine Vassas, “Le corps à la lettre”L’Homme, 160 | 2001, 11-40.

Electronic reference

Claudine Vassas, “Le corps à la lettre”L’Homme [Online], 160 | octobre-décembre 2001, Online since 12 June 2003, connection on 18 April 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lhomme/123; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/lhomme.123

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About the author

Claudine Vassas

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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