Medieval women and their objects / Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury, editors.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Adams, Jenny, 1969-

Bradbury, Nancy M.

Collette, Carolyn P.

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--France--History--Middle Ages, 500-1500.

Women.

Literature, Medieval--Women authors.

Literature, Medieval.

Material culture.

History.

Personal belongings.

Sex role.

France.

Women--England--History--Middle Ages, 500-1500.

England.

Sex role--France--History--To 1500.

Sex role--England--History--To 1500.

Personal belongings--France--History--To 1500.

Personal belongings--England--History--To 1500.

Material culture--France--History--To 1500.

Material culture--England--History--To 1500.

Literature, Medieval--History and criticism.

Literature, Medieval--Women authors--History and criticism.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Festschriften.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2017]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

"Looking closely at the meanings--literal and figurative--of the complex relationship of medieval women to material possessions. 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" -- Publisher description.

Contents:

Dedication to Carolyn P. Collette / Arlyn Diamond

Introduction: Medieval Women and Their Objects / Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury

Part 1. Objects and Gender in a Material World

The "Thyng Wommen Loven Moost" : The Wife of Bath's Fabliau Answer / Susanna Fein

Zenobia's Objects / Nancy Mason Bradbury

The Object of Miraculous Song in "The Prioress's Tale" / Howell Chickering

Part 2. Buildings, Books, and Women's (Self-)Fashioning

A Gift from the Queen : The Architecture of the College de Navarre in Paris / Michael T. Davis

Anne of Bohemia and the Objects of Ricardian Kingship / Lynn Staley

Royal Biography as Reliquary : Christine de Pizan's Livre des Fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V / Nadia Margolis

A Gift, a Mirror, a Memorial : The Psalter-Hours of Mary de Bohun / Jill C. Havens

"Parchment and Pure Flesh" : Elizabeth de Vere, Countess of the Twelfth Earl of Oxford, and Her Book / Jocelyn Wogan-Browne

Part 3. Bodies, Objects, and Objects in the Shape of Bodies

Objects of the Law : The Cases of Dorigen and Virginia / Eleanor Johnson

Galatea's Pulse : Objects, Ethics, and Jean de Meun's Conclusion / Robert R. Edwards

Transgender and the Chess Queen in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess / Jenny Adams

Statues, Bodies, and Souls : St. Cecilia and Some Medieval Attitudes toward Ancient Rome / C. David Benson

Contributors.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472130146

9780472122394

Publisher Number:

10.3998/mpub.9222733

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.