A History of Women in the West, Volume II: Silences of the Middle Ages

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A History of Women in the West, Volume II: Silences of the Middle Ages (Reprint) Pub. Date: 7/28/1998 Publisher: Harvard University Press

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History Of Women In The West, Volume I (Reprint) Pub. Date: 3/15/1994 Publisher: Harvard University Press

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Overview

Drawing on myriad sources—from the faint traces left by the rocking of a cradle at the site of an early medieval home to an antique illustration of Eve's fall from grace-this second volume in the celebrated series offers new perspectives on women of the past. Twelve distinguished historians from many countries examine the image of women in the masculine mind, their social condition, and their daily experience from the demise of the Roman Empire to the genesis of the Italian Renaissance.

More than in any other era, a medieval woman's place in society was determined by men; her sexuality was perceived as disruptive and dangerous, her proper realm that of the home and cloister. The authors draw upon the writings of bishops and abbots, moralists and merchants, philosophers and legislators, to illuminate how men controlled women's lives. Sumptuary laws regulating feminine dress and ornament, pastoral letters admonishing women to keep silent and remain chaste, and learned treatises with their fantastic theories about women's physiology are fully explored in these pages. As adoration of the Virgin Mary reached full flower by the year 1200, ecclesiastics began to envision motherhood as a holy role; misogyny, however, flourished unrestrained in local proverbs, secular verses, and clerical thought throughout the period.

Were women's fates sealed by the dictates of church and society? The authors investigate legal, economic, and demographic aspects of family and communal life between the sixth and the fifteenth centuries and bring to light the fleeting moments in which women managed to seize some small measure of autonomy over their lives. The notion that courtly love empowered feudal women is discredited in this volume. The pattern of wear on a hearthstone, fingerprints on a terra-cotta pot, and artifacts from everyday life such as scissors, thimbles, spindles, and combs are used to reconstruct in superb detail the commonplace tasks that shaped women's existence inside and outside the home. As in antiquity, male fantasies and fears are evident in art. Yet a growing number of women rendered visions of their own gender in sumptuous tapestries and illuminations. The authors look at the surviving texts of female poets and mystics and document the stirrings of a quiet revolution throughout the West, as a few daring women began to preserve their thoughts in writing.

Informed by the work of 75 distinguished historians, this five-volume series sets before us an engaging, panoramic chronicle that extends from antiquity to the present day. Volume One offers fresh insight into more than 20 centuries of Greek and Roman history to illustrate how representations of women evolved during this age. 84 illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

New Directions for Women

Read this book for its rare combination of exquisite detail and thoughtful scholarship.
— Susan E. Davis

Times Literary Supplement

[This volume's] richness and generosity will inform, move, and illuminate.
— Miri Rubin

More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews

Virginia Quarterly Review

Analyses of medieval popular culture and art are woven together judiciously in this comprehensive and well-informed volume.

Library Journal

A welcome new installment of the acclaimed series (Vol. 4: American Feminism from Revolution to World War , LJ 9/15/93), Volume 5 surveys Western women's history through the 1980s. Again, the focus is not strictly chronological; the work examines the social factors of the 20th century in the context of traditional women's issues. The consequences of Freud and Marx; two world wars; nationalism and fascism; reproductive legislation; the bioethical rights of family members; and the feminist movement have created a century of drastic and not always beneficial change. Conspicuously absent are significant treatments of the contributions of American women to 20th-century feminism, though they are acknowledged in the introduction. That criticism aside, this volume and the entire set are essential for all but the smallest libraries. The contributors and editors deserve accolades.-- Jenny Presnell, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohio

Library Journal

This five-volume work addresses the history of women from the ancients to the 1980s. Editors George Duby et al. state that this series of books "is the product of a revolution--an ongoing, far-reaching revolution in the relations between men and women in Western societies." It therefore focuses on the western European experience with some attention to North America and "is intended to be not so much a history of women as a history of the relation between the sexes" because that is "the crux of the problem, the source of women's identity and otherness." Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780674403680
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication date: 7/28/1998
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 588
Series: History of Women in the West Series , #2
Product dimensions: 6.69 (w) x 9.61 (h) x 1.19 (d)

Meet the Author

Georges Duby, a member of the Académie Française, is Professor of Medieval History at the Collège de France.

Michelle Perrot is Professor of Contemporary History at the Université de Paris VII.

Christiane Klapisch-Zuber is Directeur d'Études at the École des Hautes &Études en Sciences Sociales.

Arthur Goldhammer received the French-American Translation Prize in 1990 for his translation of A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution.

Writing the History of Women
Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot

Including Women
Christiane Klapisch-Zuber Translated by Arthur Goldhammer

1. Norms of Control

1. The Clerical Gaze
Jacques Dalarun Translated by Arthur Goldhammer

2. The Nature of Woman
Claude Thomasset Translated by Arthur Goldhammer

3. The Protected Woman
Carla Casagrande Translated by Clarissa Botsford

4. The Good Wife
Silvana Vecchio Translated by Clarissa Botsford

5. Regulating Women's Fashion
Diane Owen Hughes

2. Family and Social Strategies

6. Women from the Fifth to the Tenth Century
Suzanne Fonay Wemple

7. The Feudal Order
Paulette L'Hermite-Leclercq Translated and adapted by Arthur Goldhammer

8. The Courtly Model
Georges Duby Translated by Arthur Goldhammer

9. Life in the Late Middle Ages
Claudia Opitz Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider

3. Vestiges and Images of Women

10. The World of Women
Françoise Piponnier Translated by Arthur Goldhammer

11. The Imagined Woman
Chiara Frugoni Translated by Clarissa Botsford

4. Women's Words

12. Literary and Mystical Voices

Danielle Rénier-Bohler Translated and adapted by Arthur Goldhammer

Notes

Bibliography

Contributors

Illustration Credits

Index

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A History of Women in the West, Volume II: Silences of the Middle Ages

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New Directions for Women

Times Literary Supplement

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Library Journal

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