Author: Jennifer Ward Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317888596 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 331
Book Description
Women in Medieval Europe were expected to be submissive, but such a broad picture ignores great areas of female experience. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, women are found in the workplace as well as the home, and some women were numbered among the key rulers, saints and mystics of the medieval world. Opportunities and activities changed over time, and by 1500 the world of work was becoming increasingly restricted for women. Women of all social groups were primarily engaged with their families, looking after husband and children, and running the household. Patterns of work varied geographically. In the northern towns, women engaged in a wide range of crafts, with a small number becoming entrepreneurs. Many of the poor made a living as servants and labourers. Prostitution flourished in many medieval towns. Some women turned to the religious life, and here opportunities burgeoned in the thirteenth century. The Middle Ages are not remote from the twenty-first century; the lives of medieval women evoke a response today. The medieval mother faced similar problems to her modern counterpart. The sheer variety of women’s experience in the later Middle Ages is fully brought out in this book.
Author: Lisa M. Bitel Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521597739 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 348
Book Description
This is a history of the early European middle ages through the eyes of women, combining the rich literature of women's history with original research in the context of mainstream history and traditional chronology. The book begins at the end of the Roman empire and ends with the start of the long eleventh century, when women and men set out to test the old frontiers of Europe. The book recreates the lives of ordinary women but also tells personal stories of individuals. Each chapter also questions an assumption of medieval historiography, and uses the few documents produced by women themselves, along with archaeological evidence, art, and the written records of medieval men, to tell of women, their experiences and ideas, and their relations with men. It covers the continent and its exotic edges, such as Iceland, Ireland, and Iberia; looking at women Christian and non-Christian alike.
Author: Jennifer Ward Publisher: A&C Black ISBN: 0826419852 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
Medieval women faced many of the problems of their modern counterparts in bringing up their families, balancing family and work, and responding to the demands of their communities. Of many women in the period of a thousand years before 1500 we know little or nothing, though their typical ways of life, on farms or in the towns, can be reconstructed with accuracy from a variety of sources. We know more about a far smaller number of elite women, including queens such as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Margaret of Anjou; noblewomen, whose characters and attitudes can be sensed directly or indirectly; and a variety of religious women. Literary sources help flesh out real attitudes, such as those of Chaucer's Wife of Bath. Jennifer Ward shows the life-cycle of medieval women, from birth, via marriage and child-rearing, to widowhood and death. She also brings out the slow changes in the position of women over a millennium.
Author: Diane Watt Publisher: University of Toronto Press ISBN: 9780802081223 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
Ten interdisciplinary essays provide detailed, small-scale studies of a variety of medieval female communities from Germany to Wales between 1200 and 1500, examining a range of social, economic, and cultural groups, both religious and secular.
Author: Trevor Dean Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 131788177X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 218
Book Description
What is the difference between a stabbing in a tavern in London and one in a hostelry in the South of France? What happens when a spinster living in Paris finds knight in her bedroom wanting to marry her? Why was there a crime wave following the Black Death? From Aberdeen to Cracow and from Stockholm to Sardinia, Trevor Dean ranges widely throughout medieval Europe in this exiting and innovative history of lawlessness and criminal justice. Drawing on the real-life stories of ordinary men and women who often found themselves at the sharp end of the law, he shows how it was often one rule for the rich and another for the poor in a tangled web of judicial corruption.
Author: Sarah Ifft Decker Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000586405 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 196
Book Description
Jewish Women in the Medieval World offers a thematic overview of the lived experiences of Jewish women in both Europe and the Middle East from 500 to 1500 CE, a group often ignored in general surveys on both medieval Jewish life and medieval women. The volume blends current scholarship with evidence drawn from primary sources, originally written in languages including Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic, and Judeo-Arabic, to introduce both the state of scholarship on women and gender in medieval Jewish communities, and the ways in which Jewish women experienced family, love, sex, work, faith, and crisis in the medieval past. From the well-known Dolce of Worms to the less famed Bonadona, widow of Astrug Caravida of Girona, to the many nameless women referred to in medieval texts, Jewish Women tells the stories of individual women alongside discussions of wider trends in different parts of the medieval world. Even through texts written about women by men, the intelligence, courage, and perseverance of medieval Jewish women become clear to modern readers. With the inclusion of a Chronology, Who’s Who, Documents section, and Glossary, this study is an essential resource for students and other readers interested in both Jewish history and women’s history.
Author: Caroline Walker Bynum Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520908783 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 496
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: Mavis E. Mate Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521587334 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 132
Book Description
Written primarily for undergraduates, this book weighs the evidence for and against the various theories relating to the position of women at different time periods. Professor Mate examines the major issues deciding the position of women in medieval English society, asking questions such as, did women enjoy a rough equality in the Anglo-Saxon period that they subsequently lost? Did queens at certain periods exercise real political clout or was their power limited to questions of patronage? Did women's participation in the economy grant them considerable independence and allow them to postpone or delay marriage? Professor Mate also demonstrates that class, as well as gender, was very important in determining age at marriage and opportunities for power and influence. Although some women at certain times did make short-term gains, Professor Mate challenges the dominant view that major transformations in women's position occurred in the century after the Black Death.
Author: Jennifer Ward Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 131724513X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
Women in Medieval Europe explores the key areas of female experience in the later medieval period, from peasant women to Queens. It considers the women of the later Middle Ages in the context of their social relationships during a time of changing opportunities and activities, so that by 1500 the world of work was becoming increasingly restricted to women. The chapters are arranged thematically to show the varied roles and lives of women in and out of the home, covering topics such as marriage, religion, family and work. For the second edition a new chapter draws together recent work on Jewish and Muslim women, as well as those from other ethnic groups, showing the wide ranging experiences of women from different backgrounds. Particular attention is paid to women at work in the towns, and specifically urban topics such as trade, crafts, healthcare and prostitution. The latest research on women, gender and masculinity has also been incorporated, along with updated further reading recommendations. This fully revised new edition is a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the topic, perfect for all those studying women in Europe in the later Middle Ages.
Author: Jennifer Ward
Author: Lisa M. Bitel
Author: Jennifer Ward
Author: Jennifer C. Ward
Author: Diane Watt
Author: Trevor Dean
Author: Sarah Ifft Decker
Author: Caroline Walker Bynum
Author: Mavis E. Mate
Author: Jennifer Ward