Medieval Conduct Literature

Medieval Conduct Literature
Author: Kathleen M. Ashley
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0802098320

"Conduct literature is a term used to identify writings that address how one should 'conduct' oneself in social situations. In the medieval period conduct literature was essential reading for nearly all literate children and adolescents to educate them in the expected social behaviours for their culture, gender, and status. Using a comparative approach, this anthology pairs together pieces of male-directed and female-directed medieval conduct literature, many being translated into English for the first time, to present an illuminating picture of medieval gender norms, parenting, literary style, and pedagogy." "Containing texts written in six vernacular languages, each section is also accompanied by textual notes, an introduction, and an English translation. A fascinating examination of a diverse range of regions and cultures, Medieval Conduct Literature is a remarkable window into medieval life, customs, behaviour, and social expectations." --Book Jacket.

Medieval Conduct

Medieval Conduct
Author: Kathleen M. Ashley
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2001
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780816635757

Focusing on a broad range of texts from England, France, Germany, and Italy -- conduct and courtesy books, advice poems, devotional literature, trial records -- the contributors to Medieval Conduct draw attention to the diverse ways in which readers of this literature could interpret such behavioral guides, appropriating them to their own ends. Medieval Conduct expands the concept of conduct to include historicized practices, and theorizes the connection between texts and their concrete social uses; what emerges is a nuanced interpretation of the role of gender and class inscribed in such texts. By bringing to light these subtleties and complexities, the authors also reveal the ways in which the assumptions of literary history have shaped our reception of such texts in the past two centuries.

Medieval Literature for Children

Medieval Literature for Children
Author: Daniel T. Kline
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1136531556

This volume will be a critical anthology of primary texts whose main audience was children and/or adolescents in the medieval period. Texts will include theoretical and interpretative introductions and commentary.

The Power of a Woman's Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures

The Power of a Woman's Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures
Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2012-02-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110897776

The study takes the received view among scholars that women in the Middle Ages were faced with sustained misogyny and that their voices were seldom heard in public and subjects it to a critical analysis. The ten chapters deal with various aspects of the question, and the voices of a variety of authors - both female and male - are heard. The study opens with an enquiry into violence against women, including in texts by male writers (Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Straßburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach) which indeed describe instances of violence, but adopt an extremely critical stance towards them. It then proceeds to show how women were able to develop an independent identity in various genres and could present themselves as authorities in the public eye. Mystic texts by Hildegard of Bingen, Marie de France and Margery Kempe, the medieval conduct poem known as Die Winsbeckin, the Devout Books of Sisters composed in convents in South-West Germany, but also quasi-historical documents such as the memoirs of Helene Kottaner or Anna Weckerin's cookery book, demonstrate that far more women were in the public gaze than had hitherto been assumed and that they possessed the self-confidence to establish their positions with their intellectual and their literary achievements.

Virtuous Necessity

Virtuous Necessity
Author: Jessica Murphy
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2015-08-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0472119575

A new way of looking at behavioral expectations for women in early modern England

Conduct Becoming

Conduct Becoming
Author: Glenn Burger
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0812249607

Glenn D. Burger argues that, over the course of the long fourteenth century, the "invention" of the good wife in discourses of sacramental marriage, private devotion, and personal conduct reconfigures how female embodiment is understood.

Human Agency in Medieval Society, 1100-1450

Human Agency in Medieval Society, 1100-1450
Author: Ionuţ Epurescu-Pascovici
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 1783275766

Argues the case for the individual as autonomous moral agent in the later Middle Ages.

The Good Wife's Guide (Le Ménagier de Paris)

The Good Wife's Guide (Le Ménagier de Paris)
Author:
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2012-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0801462118

In the closing years of the fourteenth century, an anonymous French writer compiled a book addressed to a fifteen-year-old bride, narrated in the voice of her husband, a wealthy, aging Parisian. The book was designed to teach this young wife the moral attributes, duties, and conduct befitting a woman of her station in society, in the almost certain event of her widowhood and subsequent remarriage. The work also provides a rich assembly of practical materials for the wife's use and for her household, including treatises on gardening and shopping, tips on choosing servants, directions on the medical care of horses and the training of hawks, plus menus for elaborate feasts, and more than 380 recipes. The Good Wife's Guide is the first complete modern English translation of this important medieval text also known as Le Ménagier de Paris (the Parisian household book), a work long recognized for its unique insights into the domestic life of the bourgeoisie during the later Middle Ages. The Good Wife's Guide, expertly rendered into modern English by Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose, is accompanied by an informative critical introduction setting the work in its proper medieval context as a conduct manual. This edition presents the book in its entirety, as it must have existed for its earliest readers. The Guide is now a treasure for the classroom, appealing to anyone studying medieval literature or history or considering the complex lives of medieval women. It illuminates the milieu and composition process of medieval authors and will in turn fascinate cooking or horticulture enthusiasts. The work illustrates how a (perhaps fictional) Parisian householder of the late fourteenth century might well have trained his wife so that her behavior could reflect honorably on him and enhance his reputation.

The Subject Medieval/Modern

The Subject Medieval/Modern
Author: Peter Haidu
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2004
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 080474744X

This work presents a thorough historicist account of the development of subjectivity in the medieval period, as traced in medieval literature and historical documentation.

Medieval Women Writers

Medieval Women Writers
Author: Katharina M. Wilson
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 1984
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 082030641X

This is one of the first anthologies devoted to the writings of women in the Middle Ages. The fifteen women whose works are represented span seven centuries, eight languages, and ten regions or nationalities. Many are recognized, taught, and anthologized in their own countries but have been inaccessible to students in English. Others are little read today because their literary fortunes have paralleled fluctuations in literary taste and literary patronage. Katharina M. Wilson's introduction to the volume places these writers in historical context and explores the question of the female imagination and who these women were who were writing at a time when very few women were literate and most literature, sacred and secular, was penned by men. Each of the fifteen chapters has been written by a different scholar and includes a biographical and critical introduction to the writer, a representative selection of her works in translation, and a bibliography.