Gender in Debate From the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance

T. Fenster, C. Lees, T. Fenster, C. Lees

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137079978
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Modern scholarship generally treats the "debate about women" (querelle des femmes) as a late medieval phenomenon, perhaps touched upon by canonic authors like Chaucer but truly begun by Christine de Pizan (1364-1429), and therefore primarily of English and French origin. That emphasis has obscured the ways in which both writers were participating in a much wider, much older cultural phenomenon with varied and intractable roots. Articles in this collection explore how gender is put into debate in Anglo-Saxon, German, Spanish and Italian cultures, and they re-examine French and Middle English debate literature. The collection is carefully planned to be accessible to students seeking an idea of the debate's motifs and contours while maintaining the high level of issue involvement necessary to commanding a more seasoned audience. Contributors include Pamela Benson, Alcuin Blamires, Margaret Franklin, Roberta Krueger, Clare Lees and Gillian Overing, Ann Matter, Karen Pratt, Helen Solterer, Julian Weiss, and Barbara Weissberger.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editor's Foreword
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1. The Clerics and the Critics: Misogyny and the Social Symbolic in Anglo-Saxon England
• 2. The Undebated Debate: Gender and the Image of God in Medieval Theology
• 3. Refiguring the "Scandalous Excess" of Medieval Woman: The Wife of Bath and Liberality
• 4. Beyond Debate: Gender in Play in Old French Courtly Fiction
• 5. Thinking through Gender in Late Medieval German Literature
• 6. The Strains ofDefense: The Many Voices in Jean LeFevre's Livre de Leesce
• 7. The Freedoms of Fiction for Gender in Premodern France
• 8. Debate about Women in Trecento Florence
• 9. A Woman's Place:Visualizing the Feminine Ideal in the Courts and Communes of Renaissance Italy
• 10. "Deceitful Sects":The Debate about Women in the Age of Isabel the Catholic
• 11. "¿Qué demandamos de las mugeres?": Forming the Debate about Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain (with a Baroque Reponse)
• Bibliography of Primary Texts in Spanish, ca. 1430-1520
• Biographies
• Index