Reading Women In Late Medieval Europe

Download or read book Reading Women in Late Medieval Europe written by Alfred Thomas and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Chaucer is typically labeled as the "Father of English Literature," evidence shows that his work appealed to Europe and specifically European women. Rereading the Canterbury Tales , Thomas argues that Chaucer imagined Anne of Bohemia, wife of famed Richard II, as an ideal reader, an aspect that came to greatly affect his writing.

Download or read book Women in Medieval Europe written by Jennifer Ward and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Voices in Dialogue written by Linda Olson and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides insights into the intellectual lives, spiritual culture, and literary authorship of medieval women.

Download or read book Women and Power in the Middle Ages written by Mary Erler and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Power in medieval society has traditionally been ascribed to figures of public authority--violent knights and conflicting sovereigns who altered the surface of civic life through the exercise of law and force. The wives and consorts of these powerful men have generally been viewed as decorative attendants, while common women were presumed to have had no power or consequence. Reassessing the conventional definition of power that has shaped such portrayals, Women and Power in the Middle Ages reveals the varied manifestations of female power in the medieval household and community--from the cultural power wielded by the wives of Venetian patriarchs to the economic power of English peasant women and the religious power of female saints. Among the specific topics addresses are Griselda's manipulation of silence as power in Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale"; the extensive networks of influence devised by Lady Honor Lisle; and the role of medieval women book owners as arbiters of lay piety and ambassadors of culture. In every case, the essays seek to transcend simple polarities of public and private, male and female, in order to provide a more realistic analysis of the workings of power in feudal society.

Download or read book Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages written by Sabrina Corbellini and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read often, learn all that you can. Let sleep overcome you, the roll still in your hands; when your head falls, let it be on the sacred page. - St Jerome, 384 AD With these words, the Church Father Jerome exhorted the young Eustochium to find on the sacred page the spiritual nourishment that would give her the strength to live a life of chastity and to keep her monastic vows. His call to read does not stand alone. Books and reading have always played a pivotal role in early and medieval Christianity, often defined as 'a religion of the book'. A second important stage in the development of the 'religion of the book' can be attested in the late Middle Ages, when religious reading was no longer the exclusive right of men and women living in solitude and concentrating on prayer and meditation. Changes in the religious landscape and the birth of new religious movements transformed the medieval town into a privileged area of religious activity. Increasing literacy opened the door to a new and wider public of lay readers. This seminal transformation in the late medieval cultural horizon saw the growing importance of the vernacular, the cultural and religious emancipation of the laity, and the increasing participation of lay people in religious life and activities. This volume presents a new, interdisciplinary approach to religious reading and reading techniques in a lay environment within late medieval textual, social, and cultural transformations.

Download or read book Women and Gender in Medieval Europe written by Margaret Schaus and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2006 with total page 986 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book Picturing Women in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art written by Christa Grössinger and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This extensively illustrated book discusses the representation of women in the art of the late Middle Ages in Northern Europe. Drawing on a wide range of different media, but making particular use of the rich plethora of woodcuts, the author charts how the images of women changed during the period and proposes two basic categories - the Virgin and Eve, good and evil. Within these, however, we discover attitudes to sinful, foolish, married and unmarried women and the style and use of these images exposes the full extent of the misogyny entrenched in medieval society.