Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages

by Bennett, Judith M.

• ISBN13: 9780226042480
• ISBN10: 0226042480
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-11-02
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Focusing on medieval women with a wide range of occupations and life-styles, the interdisciplinary essays in this collection examine women's activities within the patriarchal structures of the time. Individual essays explore women's challenges to a sexual ideology that confined them strictly to the roles of wives, mothers, and servants. Also included are sections on women and work, cultural production and literacy, and religious life. These essays provide a greater understanding of the ways in which gender has played a part in determining relations of power in Western cultures. This volume makes a vital contribution to the current scholarship about women in the Middle Ages.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years after

Women's Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe

Green Prostitution in the Medieval Canon Law

The Regulation of Brothels in Later Medieval England

Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture

The Ladies' Tournament: Marriage, Sex, and Honor in Thirteenth-Century Germany

A Female University Student in Late Medieval Kraków

The Conversion of Women to Ascetic Forms of Christianity

Women's Monastic Communities, 500-1100: Patterns of Expansion and Decline

The Origins of the Beguines

Creating and Recreating Communities of Women: The Case of Corpus Domini, Ferrara, 1406-1452

About the Contributors

Index

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