Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages

Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages PDF Author: Isabel Davis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521866375
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 25

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Book Description
Medieval discourses of masculinity and male sexuality were closely linked to the idea and representation of work as a male responsibility. Isabel Davis identifies a discourse of masculine selfhood which is preoccupied with the ethics of labour and domestic living. She analyses how five major London writers of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries constructed the male self: William Langland, Thomas Usk, John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Hoccleve. These literary texts, while they have often been considered for what they say about the feminine role and identity, have rarely been thought of as evidence for masculinity; this study seeks to redress that imbalance. Looking again at the texts themselves, and their cultural contexts, Davis presents a genuinely fresh perspective on ideas about gender, labour and domestic life in medieval Britain.

Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages

Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages PDF Author: Isabel Davis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521866375
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 25

Get Book Here

Book Description
Medieval discourses of masculinity and male sexuality were closely linked to the idea and representation of work as a male responsibility. Isabel Davis identifies a discourse of masculine selfhood which is preoccupied with the ethics of labour and domestic living. She analyses how five major London writers of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries constructed the male self: William Langland, Thomas Usk, John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Hoccleve. These literary texts, while they have often been considered for what they say about the feminine role and identity, have rarely been thought of as evidence for masculinity; this study seeks to redress that imbalance. Looking again at the texts themselves, and their cultural contexts, Davis presents a genuinely fresh perspective on ideas about gender, labour and domestic life in medieval Britain.

Medieval Masculinities

Medieval Masculinities PDF Author: Clare A. Lees
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816624263
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Since the mid-1970s men's studies, and gender studies has earned its place in scholarship. What's often missing from such studies, however, is the insight that the concept of gender in general, and that of masculinity in particular, can be understood only in relation to individual societies, examined at specific historical and cultural moments. An application of this insight, "Medieval Masculinities" is the first full-length collection to explore the issues of men's studies and contemporary theories of gender within the context of the Middle Ages. Interdisciplinary and multicultural, the essays range from matrimony in medieval Italy to bachelorhood in "Renaissance Venice", from friars and saints to the male animal in the fables of Marie de France, from manhood in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", "Beowulf" and the "Roman d'Eneas" to men as "other", whether Muslim or Jew, in medieval Castilian Epic and Ballad. The authors are especially concerned with cultural manifestations of masculinity that transcend this particular historical period - idealized gender roles, political and economic factors in structuring social institutions, and the impact of masculinist ideology in fostering and maintaining power. Together, these essays constitute an important reassessment of traditional assumptions within medieval studies, as well as a major contribution to the evolving study of gender.

From Boys to Men

From Boys to Men PDF Author: Ruth Mazo Karras
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812218343
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
While the social identity of women in medieval society hinged largely on the ritual of marriage, identity for men was derived from belonging to a particular group. Knights, monks, apprentices, guildsmen all underwent a process of initiation into their unique subcultures. As From Boys to Men shows, the process of this socialization reveals a great deal about medieval ideas of what it meant to be a man—as distinguished from a boy, from a woman, and even from a beast. In an exploration of the creation of adult masculine identities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, From Boys to Men takes a close look at the roles of men through the lens of three distinct institutions: the university, the aristocratic household and court, and the craft workshop. Ruth Mazo Karras demonstrates that, while men in the later Middle Ages were defined as the opposite of women, this was never the only factor in determining their role in society. A knight proved himself against other men by the successful use of violence as well as by successful control of women. University scholars proved themselves against each other through a violence that was metaphorical and against other men by their Latinity and their use of the tools of logic and rationality. Craft workers proved their manhood by achieving independent householder status. Drawing on sources throughout Northern Europe, including court records and other administrative documents, prescriptive texts such as instructions for dubbing to knighthood, biographies, and imaginative literature, From Boys to Men sheds new light on how young men were trained to take their place in medieval society and the implications of that training for the construction of gender in the Middle Ages. Rescuing maleness from its classification as an ungendered category, From Boys to Men unravels what it meant to be men in a womanless context, revealing the common threads that emerge from the study of young manhood in various disparate institutional settings.

Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England

Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Emily V. Thornbury
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107051983
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
A groundbreaking study of pre-Conquest English poets that rethinks the social role of Anglo-Saxon verse.

Handbook of Medieval Studies

Handbook of Medieval Studies PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110215586
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 2822

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.

Authority, Gender and Emotions in Late Medieval and Early Modern England

Authority, Gender and Emotions in Late Medieval and Early Modern England PDF Author: Susan Broomhall
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137531169
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
This collection explores how situations of authority, governance, and influence were practised through both gender ideologies and affective performances in medieval and early modern England. Authority is inherently relational it must be asserted over someone who allows or is forced to accept this dominance. The capacity to exercise authority is therefore a social and cultural act, one that is shaped by social identities such as gender and by social practices that include emotions. The contributions in this volume, exploring case studies of women and men's letter-writing, political and ecclesiastical governance, household rule, exercise of law and order, and creative agency, investigate how gender and emotions shaped the ways different individuals could assert or maintain authority, or indeed disrupt or provide alternatives to conventional practices of authority.

 PDF Author:
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 4

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Book Description


Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature

Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature PDF Author: Martin Eisner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107513081
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Giovanni Boccaccio played a pivotal role in the extraordinary emergence of the Italian literary tradition in the fourteenth century, not only as author of the Decameron, but also as scribe of Dante, Petrarch and Cavalcanti. Using a single codex written entirely in Boccaccio's hand, Martin Eisner brings together material philology and literary history to reveal the multiple ways Boccaccio authorizes this vernacular literary tradition. Each chapter offers a novel interpretation of Boccaccio as a biographer, storyteller, editor and scribe, who constructs arguments, composes narratives, compiles texts and manipulates material forms to legitimize and advance a vernacular literary canon. Situating these philological activities in the context of Boccaccio's broader reflections on poetry in the Decameron and the Genealogy of the Gentile Gods, the book produces a new portrait of Boccaccio that integrates his vernacular and Latin works, while also providing a new context for understanding his fictions.

Scribal Correction and Literary Craft

Scribal Correction and Literary Craft PDF Author: Daniel Wakelin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107076226
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
An authoritative account of what manuscripts and their corrections reveal about medieval attitudes to books, language and literature.

Logical Fictions in Medieval Literature and Philosophy

Logical Fictions in Medieval Literature and Philosophy PDF Author: Virginie Greene
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107068746
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
This book examines the ways in which traditions of philosophy and logic are reflected in major works of medieval literature.