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Being The Bigger Ram: Arable Vs Pastoral Masculinities In The Towneley Mactacio Abel, Daisy E. Black
Being The Bigger Ram: Arable Vs Pastoral Masculinities In The Towneley Mactacio Abel, Daisy E. Black
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
This article addresses the construction of rural masculine identities through a study of the Towneley manuscript play Mactacio Abel (The Killing of Abel) and the relationships the play stages between human, animal, and land. It argues that the Mactacio Abel places pastoral and arable agricultural labor in competition through the play’s two brothers, and that this competition takes the form of a gendered attack on the masculinity of each. The article begins with Cain’s arable farming and how the character’s antagonistic relationship with the earth hints at his failures as laborer and as a man. It examines Cain’s …
May Medica: Divine Healing And The Garden In “The Merchants Tale”, Maria Zygogianni
May Medica: Divine Healing And The Garden In “The Merchants Tale”, Maria Zygogianni
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
The motif of the woman as a healer and/or cure (as a nurse, interceding saint, or beloved lady) occurs across medieval literary genres from romance to hagiography. This article explores the ways in which the character of May in Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale reflects and parodies the figure of the female healer. The first section explores the healing women of romance and hagiographic traditions, as well as the frameworks of magic and saintly intervention which underpin them. The second section applies a framework of disability studies to the enfeebled body of May’s husband January, and his attempts to reconstitute his …
Precarious Manhood: Adolescence And Group Rape In Late Medieval Europe, Michelle Armstrong-Partida
Precarious Manhood: Adolescence And Group Rape In Late Medieval Europe, Michelle Armstrong-Partida
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
Sexual assault, through coercion or violence, was omnipresent at every level of medieval society and perpetrated by males from all socio-economic backgrounds. This article argues that a specific type of sexual violence—group rape—committed by two or more individuals, was a phase of men’s social development. It explores the connection between adolescence and sexual aggression to show that collective rape was a feature of male youth culture used a form of recreation to gain sexual experience, forge bonds with peers, and publicly prove masculinity as adolescents transitioned from childhood to adulthood. Many young males first learned to rape in groups before …
Making It Through The Wilderness: Trees As Markers Of Gendered Identities In Sir Orfeo, Danielle Howarth
Making It Through The Wilderness: Trees As Markers Of Gendered Identities In Sir Orfeo, Danielle Howarth
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
Wood was an essential material in the Middle Ages, but trees – and human relationships with them – are too often ignored. Using trees as a lens through which to view medieval romance can provide us with a new perspective on the genre, on medieval gender norms, and on human relationships with the material non-human. This article focusses on the trees in the Middle English Sir Orfeo in order to interrogate how Orfeo’s identity is linked to trees and wooden objects. Although Orfeo’s harp is the most obvious wooden marker of his identity, the ympe-tree in Orfeo and Herodis’s orchard, …
‘Mony Prowde Wordez’: Pronominal Speech Acts, Identity And Community In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Katharine Jager
‘Mony Prowde Wordez’: Pronominal Speech Acts, Identity And Community In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Katharine Jager
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
This paper examines distinctions between Middle English second person pronouns thou and you and argues that such distinctions provide an important measure by which to understand late medieval chivalric masculinity.
The Influence Of J. R. R. Tolkien's Masculinist Medievalism., Michael D. C. Drout
The Influence Of J. R. R. Tolkien's Masculinist Medievalism., Michael D. C. Drout
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
No abstract provided.