Representing Medieval Genders and Sexualities in Europe: Construction, Transformation, and Subversion, 600-1530

Description

First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing. Transcending both academic disciplines and traditional categories of analysis, this collection illustrates the ways genders and sexualities could be constructed, subverted and transformed. Focusing on areas such as literature, hagiography, history, and art history, from the Anglo-Saxon period to the early sixteenth century, the contributors examine the ways men and women lived, negotiated, and challenged prevailing conceptions of gender and sexual identity. In particular, their papers explore textual constructions and transformations of religious and secular masculinities and femininities; visual subversions of gender roles; gender and the exercise of power; and, the role sexuality plays in the creation of gender identity. The methodologies which are used in this volume are relevant both to specialists of the Middle Ages and early modern periods, and to scholars working more broadly in fields that draw on contemporary gender studies. List of Illustrations vii Notes on Contributors ix List of Abbreviations xiii Preface and Acknowledgements xv 1. Representing Medieval Genders and Sexualities in Europe: Construction, Transformation, and Subversion, 600–1530 / Elizabeth L’Estrange and Alison More 1 2. 'What, after all, is a male virgin?' Multiple Performances of Male Virginity in Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives / Cassandra Rhodes 15 3. Convergence, Conversion, and Transformation: Gender and Sanctity in Thirteenth-Century Liège / Alison More 33 4. Constructing Political Rule, Transforming Gender Scripts: Revisiting the Thirteenth-Century Rule of Joan and Margaret, Countesses of Flanders / Francesca Canadé Sautman 49 5. Violence on Vellum: St Margaret’s Transgressive Body and its Audience / Jennifer Borland 67 6. 'Pourquoy appellerions nous ces choses differentes, qu’une heure, un moment, un mouvement peuvent rendre du tout semblables?': Representing Gender Identity in the Late Medieval French 'Querelle des femmes' / Helen Swift 89 7. Constructing Female Sanctity in Late Medieval Naples: The Funerary Monument of Queen Sancia of Majorca / Aislinn Loconte 107 8. 'Deschi da parto' and Topsy-Turvy Gender Relations in Fifteenth-Century Italian Households / Elizabeth L’Estrange 127 9. Fashioning Female Humanist Scholarship: Self-representation in Laura Cereta’s Letters / Jennifer Cavalli 145 10. Mightier than the Sword: Reading, Writing and Noble Masculinity in the Early Sixteenth Century / Fiona S. Dunlop 161 Bibliography 173 Index 197