Medieval Studies Commons^™

The Canon Of Mar Rabbula, The Bishop Of Edessa, Maksim Astashinskiy

Faculty Papers and Publications

Rabbula of Edessa's short canon recension is a fifth-century text preserved in a seventh-century manuscript: “The shorter recension is known simply as ‘The Canons of My Lord Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa,’ designated as CPG 6491. [Julien Joseph] Overbeck printed this collection from BL Add. 14526, fols. 30b–31a.” See: The Rabbula Corpus: Comprising the ‘Life of Rabbula,’ His Correspondence, a Homily Delivered in Constantinople, Canons, and Hymns. trans. and eds. Robert R. Phenix Jr. and Cornelia B. Horn (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), ccxxi–ccxxii.

Female Criminal Agency In Early Fourteenth-Century Norfolk, Anna K. Davis

Masters Theses

Medieval women who were on the wrong side of the law expressed agency in a specific and unusual manner. Criminal agency, as it were, was a way for them to express their wants and desires in a way that is no less valid a subject of study than actions that were legally permissible. However, this agency was constrained by medieval notions of women’s capability. This thesis examines women and their crimes found in an early fourteenth-century Norfolk gaol delivery roll to further understand how the men who ran gaol delivery “allowed” women to be criminal. As gaol delivery rolls were …

Lds Women And The Teton Dam Disaster Of 1976, Emily Willis

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

June 5, 1976, started like any other spring day in southeastern Idaho. After the cold winter, most of the residents of the numerous farming towns that lie throughout the Upper Snake River Valley found the beautiful Saturday ideal for farm work, gardening, or spring cleaning. About twenty miles northeast of Rexburg, the largest town in the area, the Teton Dam neared completion. A Bureau of Reclamation project, the dam promised to stop the annual flooding that so often decimated portions of farmers' fields along the Teton River. Around 11 o'clock that morning, however, came a terrifying report: the Teton Dam …

Æthelflæd, Lady Of The Mercians, And Women In Tenth-Century England, Rebecca Hardie

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

Æthelflæd (ca. 870–918), political leader, military strategist, and administrator of law, is one of the most important ruling women in English history. Despite her multifaceted roles and family legacy, however, her reign and relationship with other women in tenth-century England have never been the subject of a book-length study. This interdisciplinary collection of essays redresses a notable hiatus in scholarship of early medieval England. Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England argues for a reassessment of women’s political, military, literary, and domestic agency. It invites deeper reflection on the female kinships, networks, and communities that give meaning …

Performing Widowhood On The Early Modern English Stage, Asuka Kimura

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

The deaths of husbands radically changed women's lives in the early modern period. While losing male protection, widows acquired rare opportunities for social and economic independence. Placed between death and life, female submissiveness and male audacity, chastity and sexual awareness, or tragedy and comedy, widows were highly problematic in early modern patriarchal society. They were also popular figures in the theater, arousing both male desire and anxiety. How did Shakespeare and his contemporaries represent them on the stage? What kind of costume, props, and gestures were employed? What influence did actors, spectators, and play-space have? This book offers a fresh …

Res Historica, Volume 1, Lynneth Miller Renberg Phd, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta

Res Historica

The inaugural journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg, Hunter Curlee, and Johnathan Sorce. Cover art for this volume is the Phi Alpha Theta: Alpha Rho Epsilon logo created by Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg.

Medieval Infertility: Treatments, Cures, And Consequences, Zia Simpson

The Forum: Journal of History

Since the first civilizations emerged, reproductive ability has been one of the most prominent elements in assessing a woman’s value to society. Other characteristics such as beauty, intelligence, and wealth may have been granted comparable consequence, but those are arbitrary and improvable. Fertility is genetic, and for centuries it was beyond human control. Among the medieval European nobility, fertility held even greater power. The absence of an heir could, either directly or indirectly, bring about war, economic depression, and social disorder. Catholicism provided a refuge by allowing barren women to retain their hopes, while simultaneously enriching Rome’s coffers. Other women …

Melusine, Invisible Leadership And The Future (In The Past), Jan Shaw

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper considers the operation of “invisible” leadership in the figure of Melusine from the late Middle English romance Melusine. By invoking contemporary leadership theory, this paper identifies leadership maneuvers in Melusine that are similar to those often practiced by women today, but the discourses of gender identity then ultimately render Melusine’s leadership invisible, just as leadership discourses today often render female leadership invisible. By uncovering the operation of “invisible” leadership in the figure of Melusine and identifying commonalities with the leadership of women today, this paper aims to improve our understanding of the contemporary problem of the marked …

Pratiquer Ou Incarner La Vertu? L'Agentivité Des Femmes Chez Marie De France Et Christine De Pizan, Kathe Blydenburgh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the treatment of women in Medieval literature as active agents in their roles of upholding the virtues of the societies in which they live. This study focuses on works written by the female authors Marie de France and Christine de Pizan.

Burnt Lavender & Other Remnants, Danielle Airen Pringle

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The following is an essay on the craft of poetry. It talks about influences for poetry writing including other poets, history, music, and the poet’s personal life, as well as the process of writing poetry throughout the poet’s life. The work focuses on how her poetry has developed and what she is trying to accomplish with her poetry in regards to women, power, and desire. The poems are usually persona poems written from the perspectives of medieval women (either real or imagined) and a few of her own personal poems. A sample of some of the poems are included here. …

05, Kerver's Widow And Female Printers In Sixteenth-Century France, Darrah Culp

Kerver Book of Hours: 2018 Senior Capstone

After the Parisian printer Thielman Kerver died in 1522, his widow Iolande Bonhomme took over his shop at the "Sign of the Unicorn" in the Rue St. Jacques, and in 1526 she produced the first Bible printed by a woman. This essay discusses Bonhomme's assumption of the business and the roles and skills open to the widows of certain tradesmen in medieval France.

She Is Right To Behave Thus: Implications Of Illicit Rendezvous In Medieval Narrative, Catherine Albers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While preconceptions of the Middle Ages often rely on assumptions about Christianity and the kind of society that the Catholic Church promoted, the reality is that the historical and literary medieval world is much more complicated. When discussing the issues of sexuality, women, and sexual normativity, these assumptions hinder our ability to accurately analyze the content and reception of medieval literature. This project addresses this gap by positioning itself among the criticism set forth by scholars of four different cultures (Irish, Norse, English, and Italian) to examine the connections between the reception of women who act outside of the boundaries …

"A Meruelous Thinge!": Elizabeth Of Spalbeek, Christina The Astonishing, And Performative Self-Abjection In Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms Douce 114, Murrielle Michaud

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Contributing to the spirited discussion regarding feminist and pro-feminine readings of Middle English hagiography, this dissertation challenges the tradition of grouping accounts of medieval holy women into a single genre that relies on stereotypes of meekness and obedience. I argue that fifteenth-century England saw a pro-feminine literary movement extolling the virtues of women who engaged in what I term “performative self-abjection,” a form of vicious self-renunciation and grotesque asceticism based on Julia Kristeva's model of the abject. The corollary of women's performative self-abjection is ex-gratia spiritual authority, public recognition, and independence, emphasized in the English corpus of fifteenth-century women’s hagiography. …

To Write A Life : Three Women In History., Justy Louise Engle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This creative and critical hybrid dissertation explores the spiritual connections between three women in distinctly different time periods: contemporary America, nineteenth century America and early fifteenth century France. The overall dissertation explores the autogenealogobiography, what the author defines as the self-writings of women composed within a specific time period in relation to the current moment and generations of ancestral women. The objective of the creative texts is to record the spiritual journeys of life for the women who will come after for the purpose of encouraging careful observation of history so that women will be able to note and internalize …

"Good To Think With": Women And Exempla In Four Medieval And Renaissance English Texts, Jennifer Fish Pastoor

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines four English texts—Beowulf; Ancrene Wisse; Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’ Man of Law’s Tale and Second Nun’s Tale; and Richard Hyrde’s English translation, The Instruction of a Christen Woman, of Juan Luis Vives’ De Institutione Feminae Christianae—in terms of their use of exempla related to women. These texts all find women good “to think with,” to use, from The Body and Society, Peter Brown’s appropriation of Levi-Strauss’s famous wordplay. The ways in which these Old English, Middle English, and modern English texts portray women’s lives and bodies as a gateway into thought about the Christian life are also …

The War Of The Two Jeannes And The Role Of The Duchess In Lordship In The Fourteenth Century, Katrin E. Sjursen

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In the mid-fourteenth century, two women headed opposing parties in a civil war for control of the duchy of Brittany in France. Conventional scholarship explains their involvement in politics and warfare as exceptions possible only during emergencies. Contemporary chronicles and the letters of the two women themselves, however, tell another story, one in which these two women participated in politics and warfare even before their husbands entered captivity. Their participation makes sense if we recognize that medieval society understood lordship as a form of shared governance performed by a noble couple. While separate roles did exist for the husband and …

Virgin'a End: The Suppression Of The York Marian Pageants, Andrea R. Harbin

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

With the rise of the Reformation in England, we see the abolishment of much of the religious drama of the late Middle Ages. The first pageants in York to fall victim to this were the pageants about Mary, which were produced by the weavers', drapers', and hostellers' guilds. While the content of the Marian pageants themselves made them a target of Reformational ire, public sentiment was still on the side of the Corpus Christi Play as a whole. Yet the guilds that produced the Marian plays were not as powerful as they had once been. All three of these trades …

Julian Of Norwich: Voicing The Vernacular, Therese Elaine Novotny

Dissertations (1934 -)

Julian of Norwich (1342-1416), the subject of my dissertation, was a Christian mystic whose writings, Revelation of Love and A Book of Showings, are the earliest surviving texts in the English language written by a woman. The question that has puzzled scholars is how could a woman of her time express her vision in such innovative and literary language? The reason scholars have puzzled over this for centuries is that women had been denied access to traditional education. Some scholars have answered this problem through close textual comparisons linking her text to those in the patristic tradition or through modern …