Nothing less than a rethinking of what we mean when we talk about "men" and "women" of the medieval period, this volume demonstrates how the idea of gender -- in the Middle Ages no less than now -- intersected in subtle and complex ways with other categories of difference. Responding to the insights of postcolonial and feminist theory, the authors show that medieval identities emerged through shifting paradigms -- that fluidity, conflict, and contingency characterized not only gender, but also sexuality, social status, and religion.
This study shows how marriage symbolism emerged from the world of texts to become a social force affecting ordinary people. It covers the whole medieval period but identifies the decades around 1200 as decisive. New arguments for regarding preaching as a mass medium from the thirteenth century are presented, building on the author's Medieval Marriage Sermons. In marriage preaching symbolism was central. Marriage symbolism also became a social force through law, and lay behind the combination of monogamy and indissolubility which made the medieval Church's marriage system a unique development in world history.
This study of medieval stories of accused queens--noble and hapless victims whose suffering becomes a metaphor of larger social injustice--identifies the types of this fictional narrative and explores their popularity from the 13th to the 15th centuries. Offering evidence of lively debate in the Middle Ages about the nature of women, the book considers such topics as the perpetual lustiness of men, the powerlessness of women, the nature of "good" women, slander as evidence of legal failure, the purifying value of affliction, and economic discrepancies between the rich and the poor.
Growing Old in the Middle Ages draws a comprehensive picture of medieval old age, describing how it was perceived by different groups in society; what help was given to the ageing; the desire to increase longevity; the consolation offered to the elderly; and the growing concern with physiology. With the increased interest in old age as a subject for historical study, this timely overview is an invaluable contribution to the social history of the whole of medieval Europe.
The Book of Chivalry is the most pragmatic of all surviving chivalric manuals. Written at the height of the Hundred Years War, it includes the essential commonplaces of knighthood in the mid-fourteenth century and gives a close-up view of what one knight in particular absorbed of the medieval world of ideas around him, what he rejected or ignored, and what he added from his experience in camp, court, and campaign.
