Considering Medieval Women and Gender

Considering Medieval Women and Gender PDF Author: Susan Mosher Stuard
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040249477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Professor Stuard collects here a set of her articles on women and gender in the Middle Ages, beginning with her first, published in 1975. The first section, on marriage, opens with an exploration of the Ragusa/Dubrovnik archives, reaches out to consider patterns of gift-giving at marriage and of consumption. The second section focuses on slavery, specifically women destined for domestic service. The final parts contain historiographical surveys of the field of women and gender studies, and three biographical studies.

Considering Medieval Women and Gender

Considering Medieval Women and Gender PDF Author: Susan Mosher Stuard
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040249477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Professor Stuard collects here a set of her articles on women and gender in the Middle Ages, beginning with her first, published in 1975. The first section, on marriage, opens with an exploration of the Ragusa/Dubrovnik archives, reaches out to consider patterns of gift-giving at marriage and of consumption. The second section focuses on slavery, specifically women destined for domestic service. The final parts contain historiographical surveys of the field of women and gender studies, and three biographical studies.

Medieval Women and Their Objects

Medieval Women and Their Objects PDF Author: Jennifer Adams
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472902563
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The essays gathered in this volume present multifaceted considerations of the intersection of objects and gender within the cultural contexts of late medieval France and England. Some take a material view of objects, showing buildings, books, and pictures as sites of gender negotiation and resistance and as extensions of women’s bodies. Others reconsider the concept of objectification in the lives of fictional and historical medieval women by looking closely at their relation to gendered material objects, taken literally as women’s possessions and as figurative manifestations of their desires. The opening section looks at how medieval authors imagined fictional and legendary women using particular objects in ways that reinforce or challenge gender roles. These women bring objects into the orbit of gender identity, employing and relating to them in a literal sense, while also taking advantage of their symbolic meanings. The second section focuses on the use of texts both as objects in their own right and as mechanisms by which other objects are defined. The possessors of objects in these essays lived in the world, their lives documented by historical records, yet like their fictional and legendary counterparts, they too used objects for instrumental ends and with symbolic resonances. The final section considers the objectification of medieval women’s bodies as well as its limits. While this at times seems to allow for a trade in women, authorial attempts to give definitive shapes and boundaries to women’s bodies either complicate the gender boundaries they try to contain or reduce gender to an ideological abstraction. This volume contributes to the ongoing effort to calibrate female agency in the late Middle Ages, honoring the groundbreaking work of Carolyn P. Collette.

The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe

The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Judith M. Bennett
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191667293
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe provides a comprehensive overview of the gender rules encountered in Europe in the period between approximately 500 and 1500 C.E. The essays collected in this volume speak to interpretative challenges common to all fields of women's and gender history - that is, how best to uncover the experiences of ordinary people from archives formed mainly by and about elite males, and how to combine social histories of lived experiences with cultural histories of gendered discourses and identities. The collection focuses on Western Europe in the Middle Ages but offers some consideration of medieval Islam and Byzantium. The Handbook is structured into seven sections: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thought; law in theory and practice; domestic life and material culture; labour, land, and economy; bodies and sexualities; gender and holiness; and the interplay of continuity and change throughout the medieval period. It contains material from some of the foremost scholars in this field, and it not only serves as the major reference text in medieval and gender studies, but also provides an agenda for future new research.

Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe

Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Lisa M. Bitel
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204492
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
In Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe, six historians explore how medieval people professed Christianity, how they performed gender, and how the two coincided. Many of the daily religious decisions people made were influenced by gender roles, the authors contend. Women's pious donations, for instance, were limited by laws of inheritance and marriage customs; male clerics' behavior depended upon their understanding of masculinity as much as on the demands of liturgy. The job of religious practitioner, whether as a nun, monk, priest, bishop, or some less formal participant, involved not only professing a set of religious ideals but also professing gender in both ideal and practical terms. The authors also argue that medieval Europeans chose how to be women or men (or some complex combination of the two), just as they decided whether and how to be religious. In this sense, religious institutions freed men and women from some of the gendered limits otherwise imposed by society. Whereas previous scholarship has tended to focus exclusively either on masculinity or on aristocratic women, the authors define their topic to study gender in a fuller and more richly nuanced fashion. Likewise, their essays strive for a generous definition of religious history, which has too often been a history of its most visible participants and dominant discourses. In stepping back from received assumptions about religion, gender, and history and by considering what the terms "woman," "man," and "religious" truly mean for historians, the book ultimately enhances our understanding of the gendered implications of every pious thought and ritual gesture of medieval Christians. Contributors: Dyan Elliott is John Evans Professor of History at Northwestern University. Ruth Mazo Karras is professor of history at the University of Minnesota, and the general editor of The Middle Ages Series for the University of Pennsyvlania Press. Jacqueline Murray is dean of arts and professor of history at the University of Guelph. Jane Tibbetts Schulenberg is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

Women in the Middle Ages

Women in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Frances Gies
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780064640374
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Correcting the omissions of traditional history, this is "a reliable survey of the real and varied roles played by women in the medieval period. . . . Highly recommended."--"Choice" Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Medieval Women

Medieval Women PDF Author: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
In this themed collection of 24 articles by literary, historical and archaeological scholars, the study of medieval women is confidently and freshly mainstream. Profiting from the development of newly flexible models of gender, literacy, the political, the social, and the domestic, the volume is non-separatist, exploratory both of new source materials and new readings of established sources, and able to consider the broadest implications for the study of medieval culture without simply re-absorbing medieval women into invisibility. Grouped under the headings of matters of reading, of conduct and place, the essays move from legal cases to actual buildings and conceptions of the household to conduct books and chronicles to romances and saints' lives to the medieval unconscious and back again, exemplifying the mature interdisciplinarity of current work on medieval women.

Women in the Medieval Common Law C.1200-1500

Women in the Medieval Common Law C.1200-1500 PDF Author: Gwen Seabourne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367745226
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book examines the view of women held by medieval common lawyers and legislators, and considers medieval women's treatment by and participation in the processes of the common law. Surveying a wide range of points of contact between women and the common law, from their appearance (or not) in statutes, through their participation (or not) as witnesses, to their treatment as complainants or defendants, it argues for closer consideration of women within the standard narratives of classical legal history, and for re-examination of some previous conclusions on the relationship between women and the common law. It will appeal to scholars and students of medieval history, as well as those interested in legal history, gender studies and the history of women.

Women in Medieval Europe

Women in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Jennifer Ward
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317888596
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Women in Medieval Europe were expected to be submissive, but such a broad picture ignores great areas of female experience. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, women are found in the workplace as well as the home, and some women were numbered among the key rulers, saints and mystics of the medieval world. Opportunities and activities changed over time, and by 1500 the world of work was becoming increasingly restricted for women. Women of all social groups were primarily engaged with their families, looking after husband and children, and running the household. Patterns of work varied geographically. In the northern towns, women engaged in a wide range of crafts, with a small number becoming entrepreneurs. Many of the poor made a living as servants and labourers. Prostitution flourished in many medieval towns. Some women turned to the religious life, and here opportunities burgeoned in the thirteenth century. The Middle Ages are not remote from the twenty-first century; the lives of medieval women evoke a response today. The medieval mother faced similar problems to her modern counterpart. The sheer variety of women’s experience in the later Middle Ages is fully brought out in this book.

Women's Roles in the Middle Ages

Women's Roles in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Sandy Bardsley
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Information about women in this truly fascinating period from 500 to 1500 is in great demand and has been a challenge for historians to uncover. Bardsley has mined a wide range of primary sources, from noblewomen's writing, court rolls, chivalric literature, laws and legal documents, to archeology and artwork. This fresh survey provides readers with an excellent understanding of how women high and low fared in terms of religion, work, family, law, culture, and politics and public life. Even though medieval women were divided by social class, religion, age, marital status, place and period, they were all subject to an overarching patriarchal structure and sometimes could transcend their inferior status. Numerous examples of these exceptional women and their words are included. Chapter 1 examines religion, focusing on women's roles in the early Christian church, the lives of nuns and other professional religious women such as anchoresses and Beguines, the participation of Christian laywomen, and the experiences of Jewish and Islamic women in Western Europe. The second chapter examines women's work, looking in turn at the kinds of work performed by peasant women, townswomen, and noblewomen. Women's roles within the family form the subject of the third chapter. This chapter follows women throughout the typical lifecycle - from girl to widow - examining the expectations and experiences of women at each stage. Chapter 4, Women and the Law, focuses on the ways in which laws both restricted and protected women. It also considers the crimes with which women were most often charged and surveys laws regarding marriage and widowhood. Women's roles in creative arts form the basis of the fifth chapter, Women and Culture. This chapter examines women's roles as artists, authors, composers, and patrons, as well as investigating the ways in which women were represented in works produced by men. Finally, chapter 6 discusses women's experiences in politics and public life. While women as a group were typically banned from holding positions of public authority, some found ways to get around this stricture, while others were able to exercise power behind the scenes. The final chapter thus encapsulates a major theme of this book: the interplay between broader patriarchal forces that limited women's status and autonomy and the role of individuals who were able to overcome or circumvent such forces. Medieval women were, as a group, subordinate to their husbands and fathers, but certain women, under certain circumstances, evaded subordination.

Same Bodies, Different Women

Same Bodies, Different Women PDF Author: Christopher Mielke
Publisher: Trivent Publishing
ISBN: 6158122238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This volume is a collection of essays focusing on marginalized women mostly in Central and Eastern Europe from around 1350 to 1650. "Other" women are discussed in three different categories: women whose religious practices put them on the social margins, "common women" who are in society but not of society because they are in the sex trade, and women whose occupations were reason enough to shunt them. In order to fill a gap in gender history for countries east of the Rhine River, the studies included present how official city-funded brothels in medieval Austria worked, how a princess' disability affected her life as Byzantine empress, how one unmarried Transylvanian woman who got pregnant dealt with being the center of a court case, and how enslaved women in medieval Hungary were treated as sexual property. The hope with this volume is that it will show the many interdisciplinary ways that women on the margins can be studied in this region, and to diminish the taboo of discussing this topic to begin with.