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The phenomenon of medieval women's middle age is a stage in the lifecycle that has been frequently overlooked in preference for the examination of female youth and old age. The essays collected here draw variously from literary studies, history, law, art and theology in order to address this lacuna.
This book revives the variety of performances that took place in the realms of the French kings and Burgundian dukes.
This comprehensive and richly illustrated catalogue focuses on the finest illustrated manuscripts produced in Europe during the great epoch in Flemish illumination. During this aesthetically fertile period – beginning in 1467 with the reign of the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold and ending in 1561 with the death of the artist Simon Bening – the art of book painting was raised to a new level of sophistication. Sharing inspiration with the celebrated panel painters of the time, illuminators achieved astonishing innovations in the handling of color, light, texture, and space, creating a naturalistic style that would dominate tastes throughout Europe for nearly a century. Centering on the n...
What do the physical characteristics of the books acquired by elite women in the late medieval and early modern periods tell us about their owners, and what in particular can their illustrations—especially their illustrations of women—reveal? Centered on Anne, duchess of Brittany and twice queen of France, with reference to her contemporaries and successors, The Queen's Library examines the cultural issues surrounding female modes of empowerment and book production. The book aims to uncover the harmonies and conflicts that surfaced in male-authored, male-illustrated works for and about women. In her interdisciplinary investigation of the cultural and political legacy of Anne of Brittany ...
Bringing together a variety of evidence, such as princely correspondence, travelogues, financial accounts, chronicles, chivalric or Renaissance poems, this book examines marital travels of princely brides and grooms on a comparative trans-European scale. This book argues that these journeys were extraordinary events and were instrumental for dynastical and monarchical self-representation, and channelled aspirations and anxieties of princely houses when facing each other. Each such journey was a little earthquake that resonated across all layers of society. Hundreds of diplomats, envoys, aristocrats, city officials, low-status personnel, soldiers, artists, musicians, poets, and humanists were...
A Companion to Colette of Corbie presents a collection of essays offering new historical and religious perspectives on the life, career, and influences of this little-studied fifteenth-century saint. Colette of Corbie, a contemporary of Joan of Arc, established an important reform movement in the Franciscan order; founded numerous monasteries for women in Burgundy, France, and the Low Countries; and had connections with high ranking Burgundian and French noble families. Essays in this volume draw upon many relatively unknown primary sources and add significantly to the scholarship on this important religious figure. Contributors are: Anna Campbell, Joan Mueller, Andrea Pearson, Jane Marie Pinzino, Monique Somme, Ludovic Viallet, and Nancy Bradley Warren
Manuscripts, Market and the Transition to Print in Late Medieval Brittany surveys the production and marketing of non-monastic manuscripts and printed books over 150 years in late medieval Brittany, from the accession of the Montfort family to the ducal crown in 1364 to the duchy's formal assimilation by France in 1532. Brittany, as elsewhere, experienced the shift of manuscript production from monasteries to lay scriptoria and from rural settings to urban centers, as the motivation for copying the word in ink on parchment evolved from divine meditation to personal profit. Through her analysis of the physical aspects of Breton manuscripts and books, parchment and paper, textual layouts, scripts and typography, illumination and illustration, Diane Booton exposes previously unexplored connections between the tangible cultural artifacts and the society that produced, acquired and valued them. Innovatively, Booton's discussion incorporates archival research into the prices, wages and commissions associated with the manufacture of the works under discussion to shed new light on their economic and personal value.
In this collection of seven major essays (one of them published here for the first time), Monica Green argues that a history of women's healthcare in medieval western Europe has not yet been written because it cannot yet be written - the vast majority of texts relating to women's healthcare have never been edited or studied. Using the insights of women's history and gender studies, Green shows how historians need to peel off the layers of unfounded assumption and stereotype that have characterized the little work that has been done on medieval women's healthcare. Seen in their original contexts, medieval gynecological texts raise questions of women's activity as healthcare providers and recipients, as well as questions of how the sexual division of labor, literacy, and professionalization functioned in the production and use of medical knowledge on the female body. An appendix lists all known medieval gynecological texts in Latin and the western European vernacular languages.
Focusing on England but covering a wide range of European and global traditions and influences, this authoritative volume examines the central role of medieval women in the production and circulation of books and considers their representation in medieval literary texts, as authors, readers and subjects, assessing how these change over time. Engaging with Latin, French, German, Welsh and Gaelic literary culture, it places British writing in wider European contexts while also considering more distant influences such as Arabic. Essays span topics including book production and authorship; reception; linguistic, literary, and cultural contexts and influences; women's education and spheres of knowledge; women as writers, scribes and translators; women as patrons, readers and book owners; and women as subjects. Reflecting recent trends in scholarship, the volume spans the early Middle Ages through to the eve of the Reformation and emphasises the multilingual, multicultural and international contexts of women's literary culture.