Performing Polity
Women and Agency in the Anglo-French Tradition, 1385-1620
By (author) Carolyn P Collette
This volume draws on political and gender theories to provide fresh readings of a variety of texts centred in the power and agency of women during the period 1385 to 1620.
Reading a variety of texts centred in the power and agency of women during the period 1385 to 1620, this book examines changing ideals of gender within the context of changing ideologies of governance and polity. Together the essays that comprise this book lay out three lines of thinking about women and polity: that the ideology of late medieval gender roles articulated in Anglo-French texts of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries outlined important roles for women’s voice and agency in supporting the larger polity as well as the smaller household; that the acceptance and the value of those roles diminished as models of polity in both Church and State in England changed in the early modern period; that to see this change merely in terms of change in expectations of gender roles is to miss the vital link between the status of women and the political construction of individual relationship to authority. Woman is the site on which society delineates the degree of freedom and independence it will tolerate in the political subject. The attention directed to women’s roles in the plethora of woman-centred stories, courtesy books, prayer books, sermons and tracts in the period 1385-1620 is an index to shifting alignments of power that replaced medieval models of partnership and co-operation with models of obedience.
- By (author) Carolyn P Collette
Other Titles in this Series
Virgins and Scholars
A Fifteenth-Century Compilation of the Lives of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Jerome, and Katherine of Alexandria
Volume 10
Three Women of Liege
A Critical Edition of and Commentary on the Middle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d'Oignies
Volume 23
Send me God
The Lives of Ida the Compassionate of Nivelles, Nun of La Ramee, Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers
Volume 6
Saints Edith and Aethelthryth: Princesses, Miracle Workers, and their Late Medieval Audience
The Wilton Chronicle and the Wilton Life of St Aethelthryth
Volume 25
The Manere of Good Lyvyng
A Middle English Translation of Pseudo-Bernard's 'Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem'
Volume 30
Medieval Women and their Spiritual Texts: Helfta Writings, Margery Kempe, and Beyond
Essays in Honour of Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa
Volume 34
Saints’ Lives for Medieval English Nuns, II
An Edition of the 'Lyves and Dethes' in Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 2604
Volume 32
Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions
Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany
Volume 29
Saints’ Lives for Medieval English Nuns, I
A Study of the 'Lyves and Dethes' in Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 2604
Volume 18
Living Saints of the Thirteenth Century
The Lives of Yvette, Anchoress of Huy; Juliana of Cornillon, Author of the Corpus Christi Feast; and Margaret the Lame, Anchoress of Magdeburg
Volume 20
The Sisterbook of Master Geert’s House, Deventer
The Lives and Spirituality of the Sisters, c. 1390-c. 1460
Volume 33
Medieval Women – Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain
Essays in Honour of Felicity Riddy
Volume 3
Mystics, Goddesses, Lovers, and Teachers
Medieval Visions and Their Legacies / Studies in Honour of Barbara Newman
Volume 31
Thomas of Cantimpre
The Collected Saints' Lives: Abbot John of Cantimpre, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres, and Lutgard of Aywieres
Volume 19
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