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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Virago Paradigm Of Female Sanctity: Constructing The Masculine Woman In Medieval Christianity, Angela Bolen
The Virago Paradigm Of Female Sanctity: Constructing The Masculine Woman In Medieval Christianity, Angela Bolen
Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
The Latin word virago, in its simplest definition, means “a man-like, warrior woman.” For Christian men and women in the Patristic era and the central Middle Ages, the virago represented a woman who denied all biological characteristics of her womanhood, fiercely protected her virginity, and fully embodied the virtues of Christian masculinity. The virago paradigm of female sanctity, a creation of male writers, reconciled a pervasive fear of the female sex with an obvious admiration for holy women. Additionally, the virago model maintained the supremacy of masculine virtues, upheld a patriarchal hierarchy, and created a metaphorical space that validated …
Death Became Them: The Defeminization Of The American Death Culture, 1609-1899, Briony D. Zlomke
Death Became Them: The Defeminization Of The American Death Culture, 1609-1899, Briony D. Zlomke
Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Focusing specifically on the years 1609 to 1899 in the United States, this thesis examines how middle-class women initially controlled the economy of preparing the dead in pre-industrialized America and lost their positions as death transitioned from a community-based event to an occurrence from which one could profit. In this new economy, men dominated the capitalist-driven funeral parlors and undertaker services. The changing ideology about white middle-class women’s proper places in society and the displacement of women in the “death trade” with the advent of the funeral director exacerbated this decline of a once female-defined practice. These changes dramatically altered …
Piracy, Slavery, And Assimilation: Women In Early Modern Captivity Literature, David C. Moberly
Piracy, Slavery, And Assimilation: Women In Early Modern Captivity Literature, David C. Moberly
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This thesis examines a hitherto neglected body of works featuring female characters enslaved in Islamicate lands. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many Englishmen and women were taken captive by pirates and enslaved in what is now the Middle East and North Africa. Several writers of the time created narratives and dramas about the experiences of such captives. Recent scholarship has brought to light many of these works and pointed out their importance in establishing what was still a young, unsure, and developing English identity in this early period. Most of this scholarship, however, has dealt with narratives of the …