This book examines representation of the cultural and personal realties of the bride in popular cultural texts around the world. Written by authors from a wide range of disciplinary and national contexts, the essays take a perspective on the bride that reveals similarities rather than differences across cultures.

This essay collection examines the cultural and personal world of girls and women at a time when their lives, their person, their realities, and their status are about to change forever. Together, the chapters cleverly create an in-depth study of the subject, and look at several cultural forms to offer a different approach to the popularly-held views of the bride. The critical essays in this edited collection are thematically driven and include global perspectives of the portrayals of the bride in the films, stage productions and pop-culture narratives from Nigeria; Kenya; Uganda; Tanzania; Spain; Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome; Tajikistan; India; Egypt; and the South-Eastern Indian Ocean Islands. This multinational approach provides insight into the intricacies, customs, practices, and life-styles surrounding the bride in various Eastern and Western cultures.

Foreword by Kevin Hall

Introduction by Jo Parnell and Josephine May

1.Plautus, Catullus and Public Depictions of the Bride in Rome

Jane Bellemore

2.In Grey and Pink: The Image of the Bride through the Spanish Post-War Novela Rosa

Rosana Murias

3.Sex and the Bride: Citra Mudgal’s Hindi Short Story Dulhin as a Mirror of Changing Family Relations in Contemporary India

Alessandra Consolaro

4.Here Comes the (Bollywood) Bride: Gender, Power, Family, and Patriarchy in

Millennial India

Andrew Howe

5.Ideological and Cultural Manifestations in Bridal Narrative and the Image of the Bride in Modern Egyptian Visual Culture

Azza Harras

6.The Image of a Bride in Tajik Cinema

Sharofat Arabova

7.The “Economics” of Bride Price in Nigerian Women’s Literature

Shalini Nadaswaran

8.The Bride’s Agency: East Africa Novelistic and Dramatic Imaginaries

Wafula Yenjela

9.Advertising the Bride in South-Eastern Indian Ocean Islands

Zoly Rakotoniera and Gladys Abdoul