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Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

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Articles 121 - 150 of 351

Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.2, Winter 2020 Mar 2021

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.2, Winter 2020

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


The Erotic Hunt: Gender And Space In Early-Ninth-Century Carolingian Verse, Dana M. Polanichka Mar 2021

The Erotic Hunt: Gender And Space In Early-Ninth-Century Carolingian Verse, Dana M. Polanichka

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay analyzes descriptions of royal and imperial Carolingian women on hunts in both the Paderborn Epic and Ermold’s Carmen in honorem Hludowici Caesaris. It compares these early ninth-century verses to their main classical model, Virgil’s Aeneid, and considers how the latter’s ambiguous depictions of Dido and Venus might have inflected the Carolingian’s poems’ depictions of women. Recognizing that the poets’ panegyrical intentions appear at odds with these ambiguous Virgilian exempla, the article investigates the royal hunt as a poetic stage, considering how the chase offered a public space in which to present positive depictions of women. The essay …


“Writing History, Writing Trauma” : The Rape Of Igerna In The Medieval Brut Narratives, Gillian Adler Mar 2021

“Writing History, Writing Trauma” : The Rape Of Igerna In The Medieval Brut Narratives, Gillian Adler

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In the Brut narratives of medieval historiography, male heroic success and specifically the birth of Arthur are predicated upon the rape of Igerna. A comparative approach to the Tintagel episode across several of these narratives reveals how the emphasis on romance, magic, and nation-building function to validate sexual assault and elide Igerna’s experience. Ultimately, the repetition entailed in translatio studii, specifically the transfer that takes place within history-writing, reinforces the silencing of the survivor’s voice. This repetition lends trauma to the reading experience or creates the risk that readers become inured to the rape.


Discovering Constance: Reconstructing The Life Of The Illegitimate Daughter Of John Paston Ii, Jane Clayton Mar 2021

Discovering Constance: Reconstructing The Life Of The Illegitimate Daughter Of John Paston Ii, Jane Clayton

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The Paston Letters contain one letter from Constance Reynyforth, the mistress of Sir John Paston, and one reference to her ‘bastard’ daughter, Constance Paston. The subsequent life of Constance Paston has, until now, remained obscure. My research, which outlines these discoveries for the first time, reveals that, not only was she acknowledged and cared for by the Pastons, but she also married into a local gentry family, had children, and lived a normal lifespan.


El Libro De La Oracion De Maria De Santo Domingo, Estudio Y Edicion, Pablo Acosta-Garcia Mar 2021

El Libro De La Oracion De Maria De Santo Domingo, Estudio Y Edicion, Pablo Acosta-Garcia

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Men And Masculinities In The Sagas Of The Icelanders, Amanda Mcvitty Mar 2021

Men And Masculinities In The Sagas Of The Icelanders, Amanda Mcvitty

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


African Dominion: A New History Of Empire In Early And Medieval West Africa, Elizabeth Hubble Mar 2021

African Dominion: A New History Of Empire In Early And Medieval West Africa, Elizabeth Hubble

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Fictions Of Containment In The Spanish Female Picaresque: Architectural Space And Prostitution In The Early Modern Mediterranean, Amanda L. Scott Mar 2021

Fictions Of Containment In The Spanish Female Picaresque: Architectural Space And Prostitution In The Early Modern Mediterranean, Amanda L. Scott

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Medieval Art In Motion: The Inventory And Gift-Giving Of Queen Clemence Of Hungary, Elena Woodacre Mar 2021

Medieval Art In Motion: The Inventory And Gift-Giving Of Queen Clemence Of Hungary, Elena Woodacre

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Medieval Saints And Modern Screens: Divine Visions As Cinematic Experience, Dorothy Ann Bray Mar 2021

Medieval Saints And Modern Screens: Divine Visions As Cinematic Experience, Dorothy Ann Bray

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories Of The African Middle Ages, Angela Jane Weisl Mar 2021

The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories Of The African Middle Ages, Angela Jane Weisl

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Aristocratic Marriage, Adultery And Divorce In The Fourteenth Century: The Life Of Lucy De Thweng (1279-1347), Linda E. Mitchell Mar 2021

Aristocratic Marriage, Adultery And Divorce In The Fourteenth Century: The Life Of Lucy De Thweng (1279-1347), Linda E. Mitchell

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


The Virgin Mary's Book At The Annunciation: Reading, Interpretation, And Devotion In Medieval England, Godelinde Gertrude Perk Mar 2021

The Virgin Mary's Book At The Annunciation: Reading, Interpretation, And Devotion In Medieval England, Godelinde Gertrude Perk

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Miraculous Monstrosity: Birth And Female Sexuality In The Illuminated Scivias And Cloisters Apocalypse, Jenna M. Mckellips Mar 2021

Miraculous Monstrosity: Birth And Female Sexuality In The Illuminated Scivias And Cloisters Apocalypse, Jenna M. Mckellips

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper compares the illuminations in two medieval apocalypses, the Cloisters Apocalypse and Hildegard von Bingen’s Scivias, to inspect their similar constructions of female sexuality, motherhood, and monstrosity. It first analyzes the monstrosity of female sexual organs found in Hildegard’s portrayal of the Church and the Mother of the Antichrist. The paper then goes on to consider the uncanny slippage between images of birth and death in the Cloisters’s depiction of John and the Woman of Revelation 12. Ultimately, the paper not only explores the monstrosity of female bodies in apocalyptic manuscripts, but also concludes that medieval women’s …


Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.2, Winter 2020 Mar 2021

Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.2, Winter 2020

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Insistent, Persistent, Resilient: The Negative Poetics Of Patient Griselda, Susan Signe Morrison Mar 2021

Insistent, Persistent, Resilient: The Negative Poetics Of Patient Griselda, Susan Signe Morrison

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay argues for silence as a dynamic actant and vibrant rhetoric. While Walter commits slow violence against her, Griselda in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale resists the predatory practice of exploiting nonhuman objects, which, within misogyny, women embody. Ultimately framed within an ecocritical paradigm, this essay is grounded in lessons from trauma studies concerning silence, as well as new materialist and ecocritical approaches. Whether focusing on emotional distress, environmental devastation, or the agency of materiality, these critical approaches cohere by making manifest and heard what has been repressed, silenced, or overlooked. Griselda writes her own narrative, patiently and resiliently enacting agency …


Precarious Manhood: Adolescence And Group Rape In Late Medieval Europe, Michelle Armstrong-Partida Mar 2021

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 …


Introduction: New Approaches To Medieval Romance, Materiality, And Gender, Amy Burge, Morgan Boharski, Jane Bonsall, Lydia Hayes, Danielle Howarth, Vanessa Wright Nov 2020

Introduction: New Approaches To Medieval Romance, Materiality, And Gender, Amy Burge, Morgan Boharski, Jane Bonsall, Lydia Hayes, Danielle Howarth, Vanessa Wright

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Like Looking In A Mirror: A Material Reading Of The Sisters In Galeran De Bretagne, Morgan Boharski Nov 2020

Like Looking In A Mirror: A Material Reading Of The Sisters In Galeran De Bretagne, Morgan Boharski

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article explores the story of Fresne from Renaut’s early thirteenth-century romance of Galeran de Bretagne and, moreover, the often overlooked story of her twin sister Flourie. In Marie de France’s version of the tale, the lai of Le Fraisne, the focus is on the character of Fresne, rather than her twin sister who is rarely mentioned in favour of encouraging the ultimate success of Fresne in winning the handsome knight at the end of the tale. However, inextricably linked to the success of Fresne is the failure of Flourie, and in Renaut’s romance, the reader is allowed a …


Textiles, Gender, And Materiality: A Response, Bettina Bildhauer Nov 2020

Textiles, Gender, And Materiality: A Response, Bettina Bildhauer

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This response outlines the predominant current conceptions of gendered materiality in contemporary theory (such as Karen Barad’s development of Judith Butler’s thought) and in medieval studies (such as work by Caroline Walker Bynum). It identifies and expands upon four themes from the two articles in the section that are pertinent to the descriptions of textiles and other material objects in a wider range of medieval texts and current medievalist scholarship: 1) the idea that textiles and other material things can have biographies; 2) the idea that textiles are today (but not necessarily in medieval writing) perceived as connective networks; 3) …


Making It Through The Wilderness: Trees As Markers Of Gendered Identities In Sir Orfeo, Danielle Howarth Nov 2020

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, …


"The Best A Man Can Be": Subverting Masculinity’S Excess(Es) In Medieval Texts, Liz Herbert Mcavoy Nov 2020

"The Best A Man Can Be": Subverting Masculinity’S Excess(Es) In Medieval Texts, Liz Herbert Mcavoy

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This response piece situates the articles in the section within current trends in the study of medieval masculinities – including the reclamation of the “femfog” and scholarly work by Carolyn Dinshaw, Jack Halberstam and Mads Ravn – and within current discourse of what it means to “be a man” in popular culture, citing the 2019 Gillette advert “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” and the “Time’s Up” and “Me Too” feminist movements. The response identifies a performative display of gender – termed ‘psuedomedieval masculinity’ – which borrows from medieval culture to ‘medievalise’ modern toxic masculinity. Using Halberstam’s idea of …


Objectifying Love: Ladies And Their Tokens, Saints And Their Relics In Chrétien De Troyes, Lydia Hayes Nov 2020

Objectifying Love: Ladies And Their Tokens, Saints And Their Relics In Chrétien De Troyes, Lydia Hayes

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Relics are powerful signifiers of the relationship between humanity and the divine because they allow humans to physically touch a part of a saint’s body or an extension of the saint’s body. This type of symbolism may also be found in the relationship between ladies and knights in Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian romances, when a part of the lady’s body (her hair, for example) or an object that once belonged to the lady is touched by the knight. The objects that represent these ladies provide their knights with some form of power at crucial stages in the romances, usually encouraging …


Distaff As Weapon In The Margins Of Two Late-Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Romance Manuscripts, Emily Shartrand Nov 2020

Distaff As Weapon In The Margins Of Two Late-Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Romance Manuscripts, Emily Shartrand

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The marginal art of two late-thirteenth-century Arthurian romance manuscripts from French-Flanders are rife with motifs depicting violent battles. One such motif is that of a mounted joust between a knight and a woman. The knight is weaponless, but the woman wields a distaff, a tool used to spin wool or flax, as a lance in order to penetrate the knight. By contextualizing this motif with the text of the Vulgate Arthur, as well as the socio-political moment within which the manuscripts were produced, this article seeks to investigate how its inclusion could direct certain interpretations of the narratives in accompanies.


Fabricated Muslim Identity, Female Agency, And Cultural Complicity: The Imperial Project Of Emaré, Amy Burge, Lydia Kertz Nov 2020

Fabricated Muslim Identity, Female Agency, And Cultural Complicity: The Imperial Project Of Emaré, Amy Burge, Lydia Kertz

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Extant in only one mid-fifteenth-century manuscript, the Middle English romance Emaré has nevertheless captivated modern scholars and readers. The majority of studies have focused on the text’s material culture, centred on the description of a luxurious cloth that takes up 10% of the poem. A recent global turn in medieval studies has consistently highlighted the role of medieval Europe in defining and supporting imperial projects, simultaneously challenging the Eurocentrism of medieval studies and the supposed neutrality of medieval European culture. This article brings Emaré into conversation with material culture and postcolonial critique to investigate the imperial politics of the text. …


Whose Sword? Materiality, Gender Subversion And The Fairy Women Of Middle English Romance, Jane Bonsall Nov 2020

Whose Sword? Materiality, Gender Subversion And The Fairy Women Of Middle English Romance, Jane Bonsall

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Though frequently steeped in elements of fantasy and featuring idealised or supernatural characters, Middle English romances are, at their core, concerned with the practicalities of material wealth and status among the gentry and aristocracy. This persistent concern with wealth and materiality is manifested in dramatic ways in some of the Middle English romances figuring magical women. In Melusine, Sir Launfal, and Partonope of Blois, the control of masculine-gendered objects of material wealth – and signifiers of chivalric identity – is given to the fairy ladies, rather than their knightly paramours. In their manipulation and control of these material symbols of …


Possession, Production, And Power: Reading Objects In The Material Field, Anne E. Lester Nov 2020

Possession, Production, And Power: Reading Objects In The Material Field, Anne E. Lester

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This response piece explores the revival of interest in materiality and the relationship between medieval material culture and gender. Offering a rich and extensive overview of the study of materiality and gender, including a new definition of the “material field” drawing on Bourdieu, the piece specifically discusses how objects obtain their value and meaning within medieval texts, including Arthurian romance literature. The response argues that material objects give a woman power and control, outlining how this is evident through objects within texts and in material production, as evidenced in the section’s articles. The response piece poses – and offers some …


Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.1, Summer 2020 Nov 2020

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.1, Summer 2020

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.1, Summer 2020 Jul 2020

Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.1, Summer 2020

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Performing Mystical Union In Mechthild Of Magdeburg’S The Flowing Light Of The Godhead, Jessi C. Piggott May 2020

Performing Mystical Union In Mechthild Of Magdeburg’S The Flowing Light Of The Godhead, Jessi C. Piggott

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Thirteenth-century mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg characterizes her revelations not as visions but as greetings, a term she uses to encompass gestures, verbal exchanges, and experiences perceived through multiple senses. Mechthild’s mysticism is thus best understood as a series of scenarios, the embodied nature of which cannot be fully contained by text. Using a performance studies approach, this paper identifies the traces of performance—textual prompts inextricable from their (explicit or implied, real or imagined) completion in physical and vocal acts—that can be found throughout Mechthild’s Flowing Light of the Godhead. How does Mechthild’s use of performance repertoires convey the mystical …