Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion / Edition 1

by Caroline Walker Bynum

Overview

Fragmentation and Redemption is first of all about bodies and the relationship of part to whole in the high Middle Ages, a period in which the overcoming of partition and putrefaction was the very image of paradise. It is also a study of gender, that is, a study of how sex roles and possibilities are conceptualized by both men and women, even though asymmetric power relationships and men’s greater access to knowledge have informed the cultural construction of categories such as “male” and “female,” “heretic” and “saint.” Finally, these essays are about the creativity of women’s voices and women’s bodies.

Bynum discusses how some women manipulated the dominant tradition to free themselves from the burden of fertility, yet made female fertility a powerful symbol; how some used Christian dichotomies of male / female and powerful / weak to facilitate their own imitatio Christi, yet undercut these dichotomies by subsuming them into humanitas. Medieval women spoke little of inequality and little of gender, yet there is a profound connection between their symbols and communities and the twentieth-century determination to speak of gender and “study women.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780942299625
Publisher:	Zone Books
Publication date:	02/11/1992
Series:	Zone Books
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Caroline Walker Bynum is UniversityProfessor at Columbia University. She is the author of Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, and Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Body in Medieval Religion (Zone Books, 1991).

What People are Saying About This

Christopher Hughes

In 1188, the Benedictine monk Gervase of Canterbury wrote that, compared to the plodding chronicler, 'the historian proceeds diffusely and elegantly.' On the strength of her writing style and her sophisticated, sensitive deployment of prodigious knowledge, Caroline Bynum is surely a historian by Gervase's standards.... She provides an encouraging model for both historical endeavor and the management of an increasingly fragmented modern existence.

From the Publisher

In 1188, the Benedictine monk Gervase of Canterbury wrote that, compared to the plodding chronicler, 'the historian proceeds diffusely and elegantly.' On the strength of her writing style and her sophisticated, sensitive deployment of prodigious knowledge, Caroline Bynum is surely a historian by Gervase's standards.... She provides an encouraging model for both historical endeavor and the management of an increasingly fragmented modern existence.—Christopher Hughes, Voice Literary Supplement

Endorsement

In 1188, the Benedictine monk Gervase of Canterbury wrote that, compared to the plodding chronicler, 'the historian proceeds diffusely and elegantly.' On the strength of her writing style and her sophisticated, sensitive deployment of prodigious knowledge, Caroline Bynum is surely a historian by Gervase's standards.... She provides an encouraging model for both historical endeavor and the management of an increasingly fragmented modern existence.

—Christopher Hughes, Voice Literary Supplement

Editorial Reviews

"On the strength of her writing style and her sophisticated, sensitive deployment of prodigious knowledge, Caroline Bynum is surely a historian by Gervase’s standard…. She provides an encouraging model for both historical endeavor and the management of an increasingly fragmented modern existence."

Voice Literary Supplement

"Winner of the Lionel Trilling Award, Columbia University"

Winner of the Award for Excellence in Analytical-Descriptive Studies of Religion, American Academy of Religion

From the Publisher