Ambiguous Realities

Ambiguous Realities
Author: Carole Levin
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1987
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780814318737

Examining specific literary, historical, and theological texts, the essays in Ambiguous realities illuminate a number of important issues about women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: the changes in attitude toward women, the role and status of women, the dichotomy between public and private spheres, the prescriptions for women's behavior and the image of the ideal woman, and the difference between the perceived and the actual audience of medieval and Renaissance writers.--Back cover.

Gender in Debate From the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance

Gender in Debate From the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance
Author: T. Fenster
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137079975

Modern scholarship generally treats the "debate about women" (querelle des femmes) as a late medieval phenomenon, perhaps touched upon by canonic authors like Chaucer but truly begun by Christine de Pizan (1364-1429), and therefore primarily of English and French origin. That emphasis has obscured the ways in which both writers were participating in a much wider, much older cultural phenomenon with varied and intractable roots. Articles in this collection explore how gender is put into debate in Anglo-Saxon, German, Spanish and Italian cultures, and they re-examine French and Middle English debate literature. The collection is carefully planned to be accessible to students seeking an idea of the debate's motifs and contours while maintaining the high level of issue involvement necessary to commanding a more seasoned audience. Contributors include Pamela Benson, Alcuin Blamires, Margaret Franklin, Roberta Krueger, Clare Lees and Gillian Overing, Ann Matter, Karen Pratt, Helen Solterer, Julian Weiss, and Barbara Weissberger.

Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts

Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts
Author: Barbara H. Gold
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1997-03-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780791432464

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.

Medieval Women and Their Objects

Medieval Women and Their Objects
Author: Jennifer Adams
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-03-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472902563

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.

Uppity Women of Medieval Times

Uppity Women of Medieval Times
Author: Vicki León
Publisher: Conari Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 9781573240390

This guide to the feisty women of medieval times profiles 200 of these fair and unfair damsels from around the world. There's English rose Hilda of Whitby, Viking leader Aud the Deep-Minded and Wu Zhao of China, who chose to concubine, connive, murder and machiavelli her way to a 50 year reign.

Masculinities and Femininities in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Masculinities and Femininities in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Author: Frederick Kiefer
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Arts and society
ISBN: 9782503529974

Tracy Adams: 'Make me chaste and continent, but not yet': A Model for Clerical Masculinity?Victor Scherb: Shoulder Companions and Shoulders in BeowulfLynn Shutters, Lion Hearts, Saracen Heads, Dog Tails: The Body of the Conqueror in Richard Coer de LyonAlbrecht Classen: Women Win the Day: The Female Heroine in Late-Medieval German MaerenMegan Moore: Chretien's Romances of Grief: Widows and Their Erotic BodiesJudith H. Bryce: The Faces of Ginevra de' Benci: Homosocial Agendas and Female Subjectivity in Later Quattrocentro FlorenceElizabeth Schirmer: 'Trewe Men': Pastoral Masculinity in Lollard PolemicRyan Singh Paul: To See and Be Seen: Aemilia Lanyer's Poetics of VisionPaul Hartle: Sleeping with the Menagerie: Sex and the Renaissance Pet

Picturing Women in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art

Picturing Women in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art
Author: Christa Grössinger
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 1997
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780719041099

This extensively illustrated book discusses the representation of women in the art of the late Middle Ages in Northern Europe. Drawing on a wide range of different media, but making particular use of the rich plethora of woodcuts, the author charts how the images of women changed during the period and proposes two basic categories - the Virgin and Eve, good and evil. Within these, however, we discover attitudes to sinful, foolish, married and unmarried women and the style and use of these images exposes the full extent of the misogyny entrenched in medieval society.

Women in Medieval History and Historiography

Women in Medieval History and Historiography
Author: Susan Mosher Stuard
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2016-11-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 151280729X

What was the status of women in the Middle Ages? How have women fared in the hands of historians? And, what is the current state of research about women in the Middle Ages? Susan Mosher Stuard addresses these questions in a collection of essays that delve in to the history and historiography of women in medieval England, France, Italy, and Germany. Contributors include Barbara Hanawalt, Diane Owen Hughes, Suzanne Wemple, Denise Kaiser, and Martha Howell. One of the most interesting observations made in Women in Medieval History and Historiography is the way in which the history of women in each country has followed a distinct course that is in rhythm with other concerns of national historical writing. Women in Medieval History and Historiography will interest historians, scholars of women's studies, and medievalists.