Read complete books and articles on: Women in the Middle Ages

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14 of the Best Books and Articles on: Women in the Middle Ages

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages » Read Now
by Shulamith Shahar. 354 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Did women really constitute a 'fourth estate' in medieval society and, if so, in what sense? In this wide-ranging study Shulamith Shahar considers this and the wider question of varying attitudes to women and their status in Western Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. She draws a...
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Did women really constitute a 'fourth estate' in medieval society and, if so, in what sense? In this wide-ranging study Shulamith Shahar considers this and the wider question of varying attitudes to women and their status in Western Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. She draws a cohesive picture of women in a range of situations: nuns and married women, peasants and noblewomen, townswomen and women involved in heretical movements and witchcraft. The Fourth Estate has become a classic in the study of women in the Middle Ages. In her new introduction, Shahar looks at new developments in medieval women's history since the first edition.
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2.

Women in Medieval Society » Read Now
by Susan Stuard Mosher. 220 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...courtly romance, are there adequate resources to begin the investigation of new and changing sensibilities. By the later Middle Ages, in the most favorable that is, urban...
3.

Women, Family, and Society in Medieval Europe: Historical Essays, 1978-1991 » Read Now
by David Herlihy. 412 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...late in the Middle Ages, with the emergence in Italy of...position of women in medieval...decided how resources should be...had the resources needed to...therefore, that...
4.

The Role of Woman in the Middle Ages: Papers of the Sixth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 6-7 May 1972 » Read Now
by Rosmarie Thee Morewedge. 195 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...part of medieval life as it remains today, for that matter, and the custom, of course, dates back to Antiquity. In the Middle Ages, the ring symbolized eternity and union...
5.

Extraordinary Women of the Medieval and Renaissance World: A Biographical Dictionary » Read Now
by Carole Levin, Debra Barrett-Graves, Jo Eldridge Carney, W. M. Spellman, Gwynne Kennedy, Stephanie Witham. 327 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Aside from a few famous queens, warriors and religious leaders, little information is available about the many extraordinary women of the medieval and Renaissance world. This resource brings together engagingly written biographical profiles of 70 women, most of whom are "unsung," but all of whom are...
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Aside from a few famous queens, warriors and religious leaders, little information is available about the many extraordinary women of the medieval and Renaissance world. This resource brings together engagingly written biographical profiles of 70 women, most of whom are "unsung," but all of whom are remarkable for their courage, initiative, and accomplishments in a world where the conventional wisdom was for women to be "chaste, silent, and obedient." The women profiled here represent 18 countries and excelled in 19 fields of endeavor. They include artists, builders, mystics, political leaders, religious activists, diarists and dramatists, poets and writers, and scholars.
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6.

Women Mystics in Medieval Europe » Read Now
by Emilie Zum Brunn, Georgette Epiney-Burgard, Sheila Hughes. 236 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES...Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Women mystics in Medieval...Mysticism-- History--Middle Ages, 600-1500. I...movement of the...
7.

Sainted Women of the Dark Ages » Read Now
by Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, E. Gordon Whatley. 344 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

...subjects. Others reflect the direct testimony of women within the cloister walls. They lived in a rough and brutal age, an age moderns have condemned as "the dark ages,"...
8.

From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature » Read Now
by Barbara Newman. 362 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

...religious women who expressed their love in the language...Motherhood in the middle ages mixed as...had ample resources and a resilient...life offered women an escape from...
9.

Religious Life for Women, c.1100-c.1350: Fontevraud in England » Read Now
by Berenice M. Kerr. 299 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

This is the first detailed study of the Order of Fontevraud's English monastic houses. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Order was notably prestigious and autonomous, renowned both for the prayerfulness of its members and for their independent management of their affairs. Sister...
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This is the first detailed study of the Order of Fontevraud's English monastic houses. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Order was notably prestigious and autonomous, renowned both for the prayerfulness of its members and for their independent management of their affairs. Sister Berenice Kerr's study of Fontevraud's English establishments (Amesbury, Nuneaton, and Westwood) opens up a wide range of insights and information about monasticism and religious life for women in the middle ages.
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10.

Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and Household in Brigstock before the Plague » Read Now
by Judith M. Bennett. 321 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Unlike most histories of European women, which have typically focused on the 19th and 20th century elite, this study reconstructs the public lives of peasant women and men during the six decades before the Black Death of 1348-49. Drawing on the extensive records of the forest manor of Brigstock...
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Unlike most histories of European women, which have typically focused on the 19th and 20th century elite, this study reconstructs the public lives of peasant women and men during the six decades before the Black Death of 1348-49. Drawing on the extensive records of the forest manor of Brigstock, Judith Bennett challenges the myth of a "golden age" of equality for medieval men and women. Instead, she ably shows that women faced profound political, legal, economic, and social disadvantages in their dealings with men. These disadvantages stemmed more from women's household status as dependents of their husbands than from any notion of female inferiority; consequently, adolescents and widows participated much more actively than wives in the public life of Brigstock. Women in the Medieval English Countryside demonstrates not only how enduring the subordination of women has been throughout English history, but also how firmly that subordination has been rooted in the conjugal household.
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11.

Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages » Read Now
by Kathleen Coyne Kelly. 198 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

The concept of virginity is developed across a number of discourses in the Middle Ages, including patristic writings and literary texts. This book explores the representations of virginity in these discourses to show its significance.
12.

Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England » Read Now
by Ruth Mazo Karras. 222 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

"Common women" in medieval England were prostitutes, whose distinguishing feature was not that they took money for sex but that they belonged to all men in common. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England tells the stories of these women's lives: their entrance into the trade...
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"Common women" in medieval England were prostitutes, whose distinguishing feature was not that they took money for sex but that they belonged to all men in common. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England tells the stories of these women's lives: their entrance into the trade because of poor job and marriage prospects or because of seduction or rape; their experiences as streetwalkers, brothel workers or the medieval equivalent of call girls; their customers, from poor apprentices to priests to wealthy foreign merchants; and their relations with those among whom they lived. Common Women crosses the boundary from social to cultural history by asking not only about the experiences of prostitutes but also about the meaning of prostitution in medieval culture. The teachings of the church attributed both lust and greed, in generous measure, to women as a group. Stories of repentant whores were popular among medieval preachers and writers because prostitutes were the epitome of feminine sin. Through a sensitive use of a wide variety of imaginative and didactic texts, Ruth Karras shows that while prostitutes as individuals were marginalized within medieval culture, prostitution as an institution was central to the medieval understanding of what it meant to be a woman. This important work will be of interest to scholars and students of history, women's studies, and the history of sexuality.
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13.

Violence against Women in Medieval Texts » Read Now
by Anna Roberts. 258 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

This volume brings together specialists from different areas of medieval literary study to focus on attitudes toward women during the Middle Ages. The essays range from Old English literature to the Spanish Inquisition and encompass such genres as romance, chronicles, hagiography, and legal...
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This volume brings together specialists from different areas of medieval literary study to focus on attitudes toward women during the Middle Ages. The essays range from Old English literature to the Spanish Inquisition and encompass such genres as romance, chronicles, hagiography, and legal documents. In its use of well-known authors (Chaucer and Christine de Pizan) and lesser-known writers, this collection provides a rich and useful survey for researchers in women's studies and medieval literature.
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14.

Medieval Women's Visionary Literature » Read Now
by Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff. 402 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

These pages capture a thousand years of devotional and visionary writing by medieval women. The writers come from all different backgrounds and traditions, and they include founders of religious communities, hermits and recluses, wives and mothers, wandering teachers, heretics and reformers. What...
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These pages capture a thousand years of devotional and visionary writing by medieval women. The writers come from all different backgrounds and traditions, and they include founders of religious communities, hermits and recluses, wives and mothers, wandering teachers, heretics and reformers. What they all had in common was a belief that they had been chosen to speak, and here we have the evidence of their visions and experiences of the divine. Covering a span of time from late antiquity to the 15th century, the writings include examples of lyric poetry, drama (including the first play written by a woman), epics, saints' lives, and letters. as well as some newly invented genres such as the spiritual autobiography, the guide to prayer, progression of visions, and in Inquisition depositions. A new portrait of the female writer in the Middle Ages emerges, a more accurate portrait than was ever before possible, as many of these texts have either been out of print or are here translated for the first time. We see women writers of the Middle Ages doing what they did best: writing devotional, visionary, and erotic literature from a very personal viewpoint, and what they say to the modern reader has much to do with nature of creativity and the creative experience of women.
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