Relations of Power Women's Networks in the Middle Ages.

Description

Women's networks - their relations with other women, men, objects and place - were a source of power in various European and neighbouring regions throughout the Middle Ages. This interdisciplinary volume considers how women's networks, and particularly women's direct and indirect relationships to other women, constituted and shaped power from roughly 300 to 1700 AD. The essays in this collection juxtapose scholarship from the fields of archaeology, art history, literature, history and religious studies, drawing on a wide variety of source types. Their aim is to highlight not only the importance of networks in understanding medieval women's power but also the different ways these networks are represented in medieval sources and can be approached today. This volume reveals how women's networks were widespread and instrumental in shaping political, familial and spiritual legacies. Contents Series Editors’ Preface Introduction Female Networks and Exiled Bishops between Late Antiquityand the Early Middle Ages: The Cases of Liberius of Rome andWilfrid of York Networking Power and Gender at Court: An Eleventh-CenturyDiploma and ‘Las Meninas’ With This Ring: Forming Plantagenet Family Ties English Royal Family Ties: Edward I and his Breton Nieces Female Aristocratic Networks: Books, Liturgy and Reform in Castilian Nunneries Dynastic Visions: Founder Abbesses of Wilton and Barking and their Eleventh-Century Successors Mothers, Liver-Eaters and Matrilineal Descent: Hind bint‘Utba, Mu‘a¯wiya and Nasab (Filiation) in Early Islam Herstory: Exploring the Material Life of Gundrada de Warenne List of Contributors