Addressing Women in Early Medieval Religious Texts PDF Download

Author: Kathryn Maude
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845962
Category : Women
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
An investigation into texts specifically addressed to women sheds new light on female literary cultures.

Author: Kathryn Maude
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Chapter Two argues that Aelred's De institutione inclusarum offers his sister a Christian subjecthood based in virginity and treats her as a fellow spiritual director. Goscelin's Uber confortatorius, on the other hand, does not allow Eve a Christian subject position independent of his intrusive advice. Her Christian subjecthood is conditional on his involvement. In Chapter Three I show how the horizons of possibility for Matilda and Christina's Christian subjecthood exclude relationships with other women. Instead of a Christian subject position constructed with reference to her filial relationship with Margaret, Matilda is steered towards an image of Margaret as a queen who protected the rights of the Church. Similarly, Christina's Christian subjecthood is directed away from same-sex relationships and towards an appreciation of God filtered through her relationship with Abbot Geoffrey and St Albans. Conversely, Chapter Four explains how the saints' lives commissioned for the nuns of Wilton and Barking create a communal Christian subject position for the nuns based in their samesex intimacy with their patron saints, allowing them to bypass the authority of male bishops in their worship.

Author: Hetta Elizabeth Howes
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843846128
Category : Literature, Medieval
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
A consideration of the metaphor of water in religious literature, especially in relation to women.

Author: Lisa M. Bitel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521597739
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Author: Julie Ann Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351913549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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This book takes an innovative approach to the study of the penitentials and nunnery rules and the ways in which these texts impinged upon the lives of female audiences. The study emphasises the importance of the texts for the promotion of Christian values and of the expectations of churchmen in the construction of appropriate Christian behaviour for women in the early medieval West. These texts constitute the only written works which would have had direct influence upon the lives of lay and religious women. The work focuses upon the elements of the penitentials which provided female-specific expectations, and these fall largely into two categories of sexuality and pre-Christian practices. The nunnery rules seldom provided comprehensive sets of behavioural expectations. Rather, rules emphasised expectations relating to issues of enclosure, work and abstinence which came to be perceived as the defining characteristics of religious women.

Author: Margaret C. Schaus
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135459673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 986

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Book Description
From women's medicine and the writings of Christine de Pizan to the lives of market and tradeswomen and the idealization of virginity, gender and social status dictated all aspects of women's lives during the middle ages. A cross-disciplinary resource, Women and Gender in Medieval Europe examines the daily reality of medieval women from all walks of life in Europe between 450 CE and 1500 CE, i.e., from the fall of the Roman Empire to the discovery of the Americas. Moving beyond biographies of famous noble women of the middles ages, the scope of this important reference work is vast and provides a comprehensive understanding of medieval women's lives and experiences. Masculinity in the middle ages is also addressed to provide important context for understanding women's roles. Entries that range from 250 words to 4,500 words in length thoroughly explore topics in the following areas: · Art and Architecture · Countries, Realms, and Regions · Daily Life · Documentary Sources · Economics · Education and Learning · Gender and Sexuality · Historiography · Law · Literature · Medicine and Science · Music and Dance · Persons · Philosophy · Politics · Political Figures · Religion and Theology · Religious Figures · Social Organization and Status Written by renowned international scholars, Women and Gender in Medieval Europe is the latest in the Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages. Easily accessible in an A-to-Z format, students, researchers, and scholars will find this outstanding reference work to be an invaluable resource on women in Medieval Europe.

Author: Diane Watt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474270646
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Women's literary histories usually start in the later Middle Ages, but recent scholarship has shown that actually women were at the heart of the emergence of the English literary tradition. Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 focuses on the period before the so-called 'Barking Renaissance' of women's writing in the 12th century. By examining the surviving evidence of women's authorship, as well as the evidence of women's engagement with literary culture more widely, Diane Watt argues that early women's writing was often lost, suppressed, or deliberately destroyed. In particular she considers the different forms of male 'overwriting', to which she ascribes the multiple connotations of 'destruction', 'preservation', 'control' and 'suppression'. She uses the term to describe the complex relationship between male authors and their female subjects to capture the ways in which texts can attempt to control and circumscribe female autonomy. Written by one of the leading experts in medieval women's writing, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 examines women's literary engagement in monasteries such as Ely, Whitby, Barking and Wilton Abbey, as well as letters and hagiographies from the 8th and 9th centuries. Diane Watt provides a much-needed look at women's writing in the early medieval period that is crucial to understanding women's literary history more broadly.

Author: Caroline Walker Bynum
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520908783
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
In the period between 1200 and 1500 in western Europe, a number of religious women gained widespread veneration and even canonization as saints for their extraordinary devotion to the Christian eucharist, supernatural multiplications of food and drink, and miracles of bodily manipulation, including stigmata and inedia (living without eating). The occurrence of such phenomena sheds much light on the nature of medieval society and medieval religion. It also forms a chapter in the history of women. Previous scholars have occasionally noted the various phenomena in isolation from each other and have sometimes applied modern medical or psychological theories to them. Using materials based on saints' lives and the religious and mystical writings of medieval women and men, Caroline Walker Bynum uncovers the pattern lying behind these aspects of women's religiosity and behind the fascination men and women felt for such miracles and devotional practices. She argues that food lies at the heart of much of women's piety. Women renounced ordinary food through fasting in order to prepare for receiving extraordinary food in the eucharist. They also offered themselves as food in miracles of feeding and bodily manipulation. Providing both functionalist and phenomenological explanations, Bynum explores the ways in which food practices enabled women to exert control within the family and to define their religious vocations. She also describes what women meant by seeing their own bodies and God's body as food and what men meant when they too associated women with food and flesh. The author's interpretation of women's piety offers a new view of the nature of medieval asceticism and, drawing upon both anthropology and feminist theory, she illuminates the distinctive features of women's use of symbols. Rejecting presentist interpretations of women as exploited or masochistic, she shows the power and creativity of women's writing and women's lives.

Author: Emilie Amt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134720602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Praise for the first edition: 'It is difficult to imagine another book in which one could find all this diverse material, and no doubt Amt's collection, in its richness, and in its genuine clarity and simplicity will takes prominent place in our expanded, diversified medieval curriculum, a curriculum that takes class, gender, and ethnicity as central to an understanding of world cultural history.' - The Medieval Review Long considered to be a definitive and truly groundbreaking collection of sources, Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe uniquely presents the everyday lives and experiences of women in the Middle Ages. This indispensible text has now been thoroughly updated and expanded to reflect new research, and includes previously unavailable source material. This new edition includes expanded sections on marriage and sexuality, and on peasant women and townswomen, as well as a new section on women and the law. There are brief introductions both to the period and to the individual documents, study questions to accompany each reading, a glossary of terms and a fully updated bibliography. Working within a multi-cultural framework, the book focuses not just on the Christian majority, but also present material about women in minority groups in Europe, such as Jews, Muslims, and those considered to be heretics. Incorporating both the laws, regulations and religious texts that shaped the way women lived their lives, and personal narratives by and about medieval women, the book is unique in examining women’s lives through the lens of daily activities, and in doing so as far as possible through the voices of women themselves.

Author: Laura Saetveit Miles
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845342
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
An overlooked aspect of the iconography of the Annunciation investigated - Mary's book.