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Articles 211 - 240 of 1893

Full-Text Articles in Medieval History

Trouble Within The Fold: The Communal Response To Madness In Medieval Europe, Alice P. Holland Jun 2022

Trouble Within The Fold: The Communal Response To Madness In Medieval Europe, Alice P. Holland

University Honors Theses

Medieval descriptions of mental distress can inform us on a range of subjects, from community organization to diagnostic and interpretive practices. While we often employ the medical model of understanding disability presently and, while this model was still present in the Middle Ages, medieval individuals often understood mental distress as a religious phenomenon. This paper utilizes two miracle collections written in the twelfth century: The Miracle Collections of Thomas Becket and the Miracle Collection of Our Lady of Rocamadour. Miracle collections record miraculous occurrences at a saint's shrine. Many of these miracles documented healings and, of these healings, some …


“In Lucem Latine Locutionis”: The Hagiography Of Aelred Of Rievaulx, Chad Turner Jun 2022

“In Lucem Latine Locutionis”: The Hagiography Of Aelred Of Rievaulx, Chad Turner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the hagiography of Aelred of Rievaulx (c. 1110-1167), a Cistercian who served as abbot of Rievaulx, a northern English monastery, from 1147 until his death. While there is much scholarship on his other works, his hagiographical works have received little attention, a fact that this dissertation seeks to rectify. In fact, as this dissertation demonstrates, attending to Aelred’s hagiography is well worth doing. It brings us to a better understanding of Aelred himself and his understanding of the world, both how it was and how it ought to be. This dissertation analyzes Aelred’s hagiographical works by placing …


Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene May 2022

Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay accompanies and describes my thesis project, Medievalia Miscellany, a magazine for middle-grade readers which explores the world of medieval fantasy through art, comics, stories, and activities. Throughout the essay, I use my own term “archaeological upcycling” to discuss and explore a variety of relationships between ideas of parts and a whole. I then use it to characterize the way stories are created out of many different parts and how these parts help a reader to relate to both the world of the story and the world in which they live. I describe the genre of medieval fantasy …


The Mélusine Romance In Medieval Europe: Translation, Circulation, And Material Contexts, Angela Weisl May 2022

The Mélusine Romance In Medieval Europe: Translation, Circulation, And Material Contexts, Angela Weisl

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal Of Gender And Sexuality 57.2 (2022) May 2022

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal Of Gender And Sexuality 57.2 (2022)

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Affect And The Tomb In Robert Henryson's Testament Of Cresseid, Elizabeth Elliott May 2022

Affect And The Tomb In Robert Henryson's Testament Of Cresseid, Elizabeth Elliott

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The penultimate verse of Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid suggests the possibility that Troilus raised a monument in memory of his former love, Cresseid: “Sum said he maid ane tomb of merbell gray” (l. 603). Examining the political implications of this uncertain act of memorialisation, this article considers how Henryson's poem mobilises the reader's emotional response to constitute Cresseid as a mourned subject, whose subjectivity is recognised only insofar as it is limited to suffering and death. In doing so, the Testament also establishes a subjectivity for women that offers conditional tolerance predicated on respectable behaviour, contributing to the historical production …


Who Does She Think She Is?, Caroline W. Bynum May 2022

Who Does She Think She Is?, Caroline W. Bynum

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Abstract: A retired medievalist uses an incident from her early career to urge younger scholars to both self-confidence and realism about their own scholarship. Pointing out that suspicion of bright, high-achieving women has not disappeared, she argues that the greatest weapon for triumphing over it is women’s self-confidence that they set their own standards for excellence.


The Lay Saint: Charity And Charismatic Authority In Medieval Italy, Mary Anne Gonzales May 2022

The Lay Saint: Charity And Charismatic Authority In Medieval Italy, Mary Anne Gonzales

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


This Is My Body: Eucharistic Theology And Anthropology In The Writings Of Gertrude The Great Of Helfta, Jessica Barr May 2022

This Is My Body: Eucharistic Theology And Anthropology In The Writings Of Gertrude The Great Of Helfta, Jessica Barr

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Margery Kempe’S Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation And The Life-Course, Lucy Barnhouse May 2022

Margery Kempe’S Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation And The Life-Course, Lucy Barnhouse

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


The Letters Of Margaret Of Anjou, Gabrielle F. Storey May 2022

The Letters Of Margaret Of Anjou, Gabrielle F. Storey

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Notes On Contributors May 2022

Notes On Contributors

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


A Mind Of Her Own: Women's Interiority In The Middle English And Older Scots Pastourelles, Anne L. Klinck May 2022

A Mind Of Her Own: Women's Interiority In The Middle English And Older Scots Pastourelles, Anne L. Klinck

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The pastourelle achieved what might be called its classic form in Middle French poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: a mini-narrative in which the narrator, a knight or clerk, tells how he tried to have his will with a lower-class girl he happened upon while riding in the country. He greets her, sweet-talks her, and propositions her; she protests vigorously. Sometimes the debate ends here. Otherwise, her accoster overcomes her resistance by guile or force, and sexually assails her. The tone is light-hearted and cynical, the action crude. To modern readers, this narrative may be mildly amusing, rather tedious, …


Alchemy, The Liber Aureus, And The Erotics Of Knowledge, Kersti Francis May 2022

Alchemy, The Liber Aureus, And The Erotics Of Knowledge, Kersti Francis

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Medieval alchemy was an overwhelmingly masculine practice, and its instruction books reflect the exclusivity of its practitioners. This article examines the use of secrecy and masculine discourse in a sixteenth-century Latin alchemical handbook, the Liber aureus, to demonstrate that there exists an erotically charged tension between authors and their readers. Alchemical instruction books like the Liber aureus draw upon this tension in the service of a particular kind of gatekeeping that creates hierarchies of both knowledge and alchemical practitioners. By investigating secrecy and its provocative effects both within and beyond this manuscript, I argue that alchemical instruction books’ secretive …


Calkas’S Daughter: Paternal Authority And Feminine Virtue In Troilus And Criseyde, Jennifer Alberghini May 2022

Calkas’S Daughter: Paternal Authority And Feminine Virtue In Troilus And Criseyde, Jennifer Alberghini

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The heroine of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde has been of considerable interest to medieval feminist scholars as a woman who is depicted as both virtuous and an adulteress. Yet critical discussions do not often view Criseyde’s virtue in light of her role as daughter. This article explores that role, focusing on how her father Calkas is described by the characters as having authority over his daughter’s body in the marriage market. This will later enable them to use him as an excuse for Criseyde’s failure to return to Troy and thus preserve her status as virtuous. However, the characters …


Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments For An Ill-Used Past, Ana C. Núñez May 2022

Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments For An Ill-Used Past, Ana C. Núñez

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


When Feminism Isn't Enough, Monica H. Green May 2022

When Feminism Isn't Enough, Monica H. Green

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

An invited “retrospective” on Monica H. Green's career in medieval studies.


Mothers, Space, And Power In Athelston, Kirsty Bolton May 2022

Mothers, Space, And Power In Athelston, Kirsty Bolton

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The late fourteenth-century Middle English romance Athelston explores the extent and propriety of monarchic power. Integral to this exploration are the characters of two women in the text whose enactments of motherhood reveal the very human failings of the divinely elected king and contribute to the romance’s advocation of law and the church to temper monarchic power. This article focuses on the use of space in relation to power, authority, gender, and motherhood, arguing that the writer of Athelston uses the disruption of gendered spaces, particularly in relation to pregnant women, to comment on systems of power and authority in …


Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority In Poitiers’ Abbey Of Sainte-Croix, Alexandra Verini May 2022

Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority In Poitiers’ Abbey Of Sainte-Croix, Alexandra Verini

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men And Salvation In Medieval Women’S Monastic Life, Holle Canatella May 2022

Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men And Salvation In Medieval Women’S Monastic Life, Holle Canatella

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.


John Crophill: A Trustworthy Man In Fifteenth-Century Rural England (Gms Essay Prize Article), Rehan Shah May 2022

John Crophill: A Trustworthy Man In Fifteenth-Century Rural England (Gms Essay Prize Article), Rehan Shah

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper explores the role of trust and trustworthiness in the masculine gender identity of the fifteenth-century bailiff and medical practitioner John Crophill (d. c. 1485) who resided in Wix, Essex. Drawing on evidence from his personal notebook, the work argues that Crophill was aware of the need to construct his trustworthy reputation, a requirement enacted via his own interaction with other individuals. A consideration of three separate elements of his persona (party host, craft master, and probable involvement with childbirth) provide a structure for the paper, as Crophill seemingly negotiates his own relationships with both male and female individuals, …


The Cunning Linguist Of Agbabi’S “The Kiss”, Elan J. Pavlinich May 2022

The Cunning Linguist Of Agbabi’S “The Kiss”, Elan J. Pavlinich

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In the Old French fabliaux tradition, sex acts and generic conventions intersect, revealing strategies of power. For example, Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale, a Middle English text that is informed by fabliaux conventions, follows the sexual desires and exchanges of power between men, in the context of a frame narrative that privileges competition between the men of The Canterbury Tales, which is located within English literary canons dominated by men. In “The Kiss,” Patience Agbabi’s modern retelling of The Miller’s Tale, the central woman of the narrative assumes authorial control, and she privileges sex acts that empower women’s …


The Unity Of Normanitas: Norman Identity In Twelfth-Century Scotland And Southern Italy, Zachariah J. Chamberlin May 2022

The Unity Of Normanitas: Norman Identity In Twelfth-Century Scotland And Southern Italy, Zachariah J. Chamberlin

All Theses

Scholars have rigorously debated the extent to which the Normans remained a definitively identifiable group as they branched out from Normandy in endeavors of conquest and expansion. In the twentieth century, historians such as Charles Homer Haskins and David Douglas maintained the unity of Norman identity throughout the British Isles, southern Italy, and the crusader states. Other scholars like R. H. C. Davis argued that the Normans were merely extraordinary cultural assimilators and decried the notion of Norman unity, or Normanitas, as a myth propagated by chroniclers and historians dating back to the tenth century. Drawing upon recent scholarship, …


Unearthing The Witch: Reckoning With Gender, Magic, And The Unusual Dead Within Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burials, Samantha Melvin Apr 2022

Unearthing The Witch: Reckoning With Gender, Magic, And The Unusual Dead Within Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burials, Samantha Melvin

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The fifth to seventh centuries CE, or the Migration Period, marked the development of Anglo-Saxon culture and society in England. The early Anglo-Saxons are known largely through their material culture and mortuary practices, left behind in medieval cemeteries that twist their way across the English landscape. The remains of early Anglo-Saxons tell rich and interesting histories about past peoples, but within the broader landscapes of these cemeteries are deviant burials. These are burials that are specifically typified as ones that ‘deviate’ from the norm, usually indicating that the inhumed individual was punished in death for actions committed in life. These …


Noble Pagans And Satanic Saracens: Literary Portrayals Of Islam In Medieval Italy And Iberia., John Spencer Jones Apr 2022

Noble Pagans And Satanic Saracens: Literary Portrayals Of Islam In Medieval Italy And Iberia., John Spencer Jones

Honors Theses

The medieval Christian world is generally associated with a kind of religious zealotry that would seem to preclude the development of nuanced understandings of the religious Other. The heightened interreligious contact in regions such as Iberia and the Italian Peninsula, however, made room for relationships with members of other faiths that resulted in more developed ideas about these other creeds. This honors thesis examines the portrayal of Islam in the Christian literature of medieval Italy and Iberia, dating from the late 11th century to the middle of the 14th century. It categorizes a few types of the literary “use” of …


Angels, Snakes, And Everything In Between: The Fall Of The Byzantine Eunuch, Tess E. Nye Apr 2022

Angels, Snakes, And Everything In Between: The Fall Of The Byzantine Eunuch, Tess E. Nye

Young Historians Conference

Great figures of fascination, eunuchs have mystified ancients and contemporaries alike through their physical mutilation, sexual ambiguity, and distinct roles within civilizations and societies. Underpinning Byzantine imperial court life, eunuchs possessed great influence in domestic and political spheres for much of the empire’s history. Following the Latin occupation of Constantinople in the 13th century and extending onwards, however, eunuchs and their influence became increasingly obsolete. This paper explores the broad scope of the Byzantine eunuch’s social and political power and the causes for the eunuch’s decline nearing the collapse of the Byzantine empire.


Poetry To Prose: The Influence Of Herodotus On Written History, Frances B. Currie Apr 2022

Poetry To Prose: The Influence Of Herodotus On Written History, Frances B. Currie

Young Historians Conference

In his book, The Histories, Herodotus of Halicarnassus expertly displayed his inquiries into the cultures and conflicts that transformed the Mediterranean world during the Greco-Persian Wars of the fifth century BCE. By writing his narrative in prose, citing his work, and providing cultural reasoning for past events, Herodotus earned himself the nicknames “father of history” and “father of comparative ethnography,” but his inclusion of fables also labeled him the “father of lies.” A historian named Thucydides eventually refined the historical genre to focus on politics without the inclusion of myths, narrowing the discipline of history for another thousand years. …


The Failure Of The Anabaptist Kingdom Of Münster, Sonja Cutts Apr 2022

The Failure Of The Anabaptist Kingdom Of Münster, Sonja Cutts

Young Historians Conference

In February 1534, after rebelling against the authority of their Catholic prince-bishop, the German town of Münster fell under Anabaptist rule. During the next sixteen months, the city’s religious leaders would advocate in favor of Münster becoming a “community of goods,” in which all goods are shared in common. However, their egalitarian dream never fully materialized. This paper examines how the hidden motives of Münster’s political leaders both helped the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster come into being and prevented the accomplishment of its economic goals.


Paving The Way: Women In Music At Ferrara, Italy During The Late 1500s, Ella Yarris Apr 2022

Paving The Way: Women In Music At Ferrara, Italy During The Late 1500s, Ella Yarris

Young Historians Conference

During the late Renaissance period, musical advancement and development thrived in the courts of dukes around Italy. However, in Ferrara around 1580, a group of women began to gain unprecedented attention for their court performances and dedication to music. Interestingly, this region was also home to a prolific group of cloistered musicians. This paper explores the impact that the Ferrarese madrigal singers would have on the future of music professions for women of all social classes, as well as the relationship of court music to religious music in a time where life as a whole was becoming more secular.


Of Vultures, Souls, And Galen: Theology And Medical Cures In Early Medieval Europe, Christina Cannon Apr 2022

Of Vultures, Souls, And Galen: Theology And Medical Cures In Early Medieval Europe, Christina Cannon

Campus Research Month

Examining how medical cures in early medieval Europe reflect the theology of the time is one that involves tracing and defining the emergence of a more defined field of "medicine," beginning with Galen. The work briefly examines prevailing contemporary views of the relation of body to soul, as well as what medical cures looked like. Understanding how 'pagan' thought was conceptualized and related to 'Christian' thought during the period is also helpful, and the work seeks to broadly consider these themes while noting particular examples that answer the question of how theology and medicine were related in medieval Europe.