History Commons^™

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 …

Alchemical Word-Magic In 'The Winter’S Tale', Rana Banna

Accessus

Within alchemical writing there is both a religious and scientific register in simultaneous coexistence. The linguistic symbols of alchemy are themselves to be understood as chemical matter embedded in the world by divine providence: a principle manifest in the doctrine of signatures. The natural world offers a complex but ultimately resolvable hermeneutic challenge to the natural scientist, whose job it becomes to be a reader of the book of nature wherein the Creator has inscribed a legible, if often allusive, meaning and purpose. This paper will proceed to explore how early modern alchemical-thinking impacted attitudes towards language and meaning …

Reading Agrippa Von Nettesheim’S De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres: Textual Structure And Central Arguments, Allison Kavey

Accessus

Abstract: This article reads Agrippa von Nettesheim’s De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres (1531/1533) as a comprehensive model of the universe that integrates magic as part of the original Creation. It focuses on the text’s structure to make sense of a book that has sometimes been dismissed as an encyclopedia or read primarily through the lens of Agrippa’s other works. It concludes that each of the three sections of this text provides evidence to support Agrippa’s model of the universe and that an early modern reader would have had the ability and reading style to put those pieces together. It further …

Reading The Old Norse-Icelandic Maríu Saga In Its Manuscript Contexts, Daniel Najork

Northern Medieval World

Maríu saga, the Old Norse-Icelandic life of the Virgin Mary, survives in nineteen manuscripts. In the extant manuscripts Maríu saga rarely exists in the codex by itself. This study restores the saga to its manuscript contexts in order to better understand the meaning of the text within its manuscript matrix, why it was copied in the specific manuscripts it was, and how it was read and used by the different communities that preserved the manuscripts.

The Development Of Education In Medieval Iceland, Ryder Patzuk-Russell

Northern Medieval World

This book investigates the institutions and practices of education which lay behind medieval Icelandic literature, as well as behind many other aspects of medieval Icelandic culture and society. By bringing together a broad spectrum of sources, including sagas, law codes, and grammatical treatises, it addresses the history of education in medieval Iceland from multiple perspectives.

“Space For All?”: An Analysis Of Race, Gender, And Society In The Cult Classic Doctor Who., Liron Sussman

Honors Theses

Much like the Doctor, people are constantly growing and evolving, and it is out of a desire for human connection that people strive, always, to improve and as a long-running television program, Doctor Who reflects that desire for connection. This analysis explores race, gender, and society as portrayed in the modern series of Doctor Who (2005-).

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 …

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.

"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 …

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

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

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

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 …

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. …

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

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, …

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 …

Medieval Futurity: Essays For The Future Of A Queer Medieval Studies, Will Rogers, Christopher Michael Roman

New Queer Medievalisms

This collection of essays asks contributors to take the capaciousness of the word "queer" to heart in order to think about what medieval queers would have looked like and how they may have existed on the margins and borders of dominant, normative sexuality and desire. The contributors work with recent trends in queer medieval studies, blending together modern concepts of sexuality and desire with the queer configurations of eroticism, desire, and materiality as they might have existed for medieval audiences.

The Wisdom Of Exeter: Anglo-Saxon Studies In Honor Of Patrick W. Conner, Edward J. Christie

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

This interdisciplinary volume collects original essays in literary criticism and literary theory, philology, codicology, metrics, and art history. Composed by prominent scholars in Anglo-Saxon studies, these essays honor the depth and breadth of Patrick W. Conner’s influence in our discipline. As a scholar, teacher, editor, administrator and innovator, Pat has contributed to Anglo-Saxon studies for four decades. It is hard to say which of his legacies is most profound.

The World Chronicle Of Guillaume De Nangis: A Manuscript's Journey From Saint-Denis To St. Pancras, Daniel Williman, Karen Ann Corsano

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

The heart of this book is the biography of a manuscript codex, British Library Royal MS 13 E IV: the Latin Chronicle (Creation to 1300) of Guillaume de Nangis, copied in the abbey library of St-Denis-en-France. This volume was used as evidence in the legal and political battles of the French royal family until it came into the treasure of Jean, duc de Berry. In 1416 it vanished from Paris and France. Modern British scholarship has placed it in the library of King Henry VIII, whose autograph notes appear in its margins. The authors show how it traveled from one …

The Color Line In Communism: The East German Ministry Of Culture’S Portrayal Of Paul Robeson’S State Visit, Colin J. Rensch

Masters Theses

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Cold War, the American Civil Rights movement, and anticolonialism combined to create a complex political, social, and economic landscape and a division of the globe into the so-called first, second, and third worlds. It is within this context that African American performer and activist Paul Robeson traveled to the GDR for an official visit in October 1960.

This visit was highly significant in light of the oppression Robeson had experienced at the hands of the US State Department. In response to Robeson’s communist sympathy, the State Department had revoked Robeson’s passport in 1950, and …

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

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

The Portrayal Of The Woman’S Suffrage Movement In High School History Textbooks, Michelle A. Devries

Masters Theses

The narrative of the woman’s suffrage movement in high school history textbooks varies from textbook to textbook and over time. Textbooks include different information, people, events, and interpretations of events. They employ different word choices and pictures. By using comparative analyzation of numerous popular high school textbooks, the pressure exerted by external economic, social, and political forces on the historical narrative can be seen. Studying the historical narrative in this way trains students to be discerning learners of history and equips them not only to recognize the bias in any historical narrative, but also to be able to analyze how …

Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.55, No.2, Winter 2019

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.55, No.2, Winter 2019

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

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 …

Talking Back: Sodomy Laws And Transgressive Subjectivity In Medieval Venice, Alex Baldassano

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Urban Italian law, by the fifteenth-century, would become particularly aggressive in comparison to the rest of Europe not only in prosecuting sodomy, but also in implementing the threatened capital punishment. The 1354 Venetian court case of Rolandinus/a Ronchaia, in the century leading up to the officialization of the law, both exemplifies this trend and yet also stands out as unique because of the subject’s gender presentation; the case seeks to resolve whether or not this person, perceived either as ambiguously gendered or as a man dressed as a woman, can be convicted of committing sodomy or prostitution. Ronchaia, however, is …

Disordered Women? The Hospital Sisters Of Mainz And Their Late Medieval Identities, Lucy C. Barnhouse

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Debates over the identity of women’s religious communities have exercised historians no less than late medieval canonists and officials. Even as the legal regulation of such communities increased, so, paradoxically, did the diversity of forms that such communities took. Although these trends have been the subject of much historical attention, the division of mixed-gender hospital communities which occurred across Europe in the thirteenth century has not hitherto been integrated into such studies. I attempt to redress this lacuna by examining the contested religious identity of the hospital sisters of Mainz. Forced to leave the mixed-gender staff of the city’s Heilig …

Experiencing Authority: The Wife Of Bath's Deaf Ear And The Flawed Exegesis Of St. Jerome, David Pedersen

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Although Chaucer’s Wife of Bath is among English literature’s most analyzed characters, scholars have been remarkably uninterested in one of her most unique traits: her deaf ear. Despite the fact that this disability is mentioned more often than any of her other physical characteristics, more even than the regularly discussed gap in her teeth, scholars have rarely spent more than a paragraph addressing the deafness, if they do so at all. This is no doubt due in part to the fact that scholars have assumed a symbolic link between the Wife’s inability to hear and her problematic scriptural exegesis, and …

Mechthild Of Magdeburg, Hadewijch Of Brabant, And Marguerite Of Porete: The Annihilation Of The Soul And The Challenge To Church Authority, Ashley Odebiyi

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.