Manners, Customs and Dress during the Middles Ages and during the Renaissance Period

A comprehensive and detailed account of medieval life and culture in France, with reference to other parts of Europe, including chapters on private life, food, hunting, games and pastimes, costume, privileges and rights, justice, commerce, finance, and punishments.

An Anthology of Ancient and Medieval Woman's Song

This collection focuses on a woman's point of view in love poetry, and juxtaposes poems by women and poems about women to raise questions about how femininity is constructed. Although most medieval "woman's songs" are either anonymous or male-authored lyrics in a popular style, the term can usefully be expanded to cover poetry composed by women, and poetry that is aristocratic or learned rather than popular. Poetry from ancient Greece and Rome that resonates with the medieval poems is also included here.

Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages

Nothing less than a rethinking of what we mean when we talk about "men" and "women" of the medieval period, this volume demonstrates how the idea of gender -- in the Middle Ages no less than now -- intersected in subtle and complex ways with other categories of difference. Responding to the insights of postcolonial and feminist theory, the authors show that medieval identities emerged through shifting paradigms -- that fluidity, conflict, and contingency characterized not only gender, but also sexuality, social status, and religion.

Medieval Marriage - Symbolism and Society

This study shows how marriage symbolism emerged from the world of texts to become a social force affecting ordinary people. It covers the whole medieval period but identifies the decades around 1200 as decisive. New arguments for regarding preaching as a mass medium from the thirteenth century are presented, building on the author's Medieval Marriage Sermons. In marriage preaching symbolism was central. Marriage symbolism also became a social force through law, and lay behind the combination of monogamy and indissolubility which made the medieval Church's marriage system a unique development in world history.

England and Iberia in the Middle Ages - 12th - 15th Century Cultural

This groundbreaking interdisciplinary collection of essays by American, British, and Iberian scholars examines the literary, historical, and artistic exchanges between England and Iberia from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. Ranging from analyses of royal marriages and political alliances to examinations of literary, artistic, and religious interactions, these essays demonstrate the importance of Anglo-Iberian relationships both in and of themselves and in the larger context of developments in Medieval Europe.