HS1472 - Medieval Women

Runs over both semesters each year

THIS COURSE IS NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE

2 modules: 20 credits

Prerequisites: Any Part One History module
Necessary for: No courses currently build directly on this one
Availability: All history degree schemes (including single, integrated and joint).
Staff: Helen Nicholson

Course content

The history of the European Middle Ages has often been written from a distorted viewpoint which assumed that women were unimportant in medieval society. In recent years historians have begun to redress this distortion, and this course sets out to explore some of the sources which this new research has uncovered. Students will consider both how modern historians have approached the history of women and how medieval writers recorded it, and the images and preconceptions which dictated how they wrote. Some of the roles and activities of women in medieval society will be examined, contrasting the picture of women being limited and repressed, which is set out by some chronicles and legal texts, with other sources which suggest that they played a far more active role in society. As far as possible, the subject will be approached through the writings of women themselves. Because of the scarcity of all written evidence for the medieval period before 1000, the course will concentrate on the central and later middle ages, but material from the earlier period will also be used.

Teaching: 10 one hour lectures and 10 seminars.
Assessment: One essay (25%); one examination (75%).

Aim of the course

• To examine selected primary sources for the history of women in Europe in the Middle Ages, with a focus on the period 1000-1450;
• to examine how writers of the Middle Ages and modern scholars have recorded and analysed the history of women’s lives during the Middle Ages;
• to consider the problems which historians face in establishing how women actually lived in Europe during the Middle Ages.

Outcomes

At the end of the period of learning, students will be expected to:

• demonstrate a detailed knowledge and understanding of various aspects of women’s lives in Europe during the Middle Ages;
• discuss with reference to both primary sources and modern scholarship selected topics such as women’s role in government and warfare, women’s spirituality, women’s roles in the countryside and in urban society, and show how these varied over time and from one area to another;
• demonstrate an ability to analyse the source materials and show an understanding of how scholars have approached them;
• present arguments clearly and concisely in one assessed essay of 2,000 words, in accordance with appropriate scholarly conventions, and in examination answers.

Syllabus content

Finding medieval women: the problems;
Attitudes towards medieval women held by modern historians and by medieval writers;
Medieval law as it applied to women;
Women’s role in government and positions of authority;
Women’s role in warfare and military activity;
Women in religion and heretical activity;
Women’s role in rural life;
Women’s role in town life;
Culture and the education of women;
Love, marriage and the family.

Suggested preliminary reading

Any of:

1. Emilie Amt, Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: a sourcebook (Routledge, 1993)
2. Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Clarendon Press, 1997)
3. Alcuin Blamires, Karen Pratt and C. W. Marx, edS, Women Defamed and Women Defended: an Anthology of Medieval Texts (Clarendon Press, 1992)
4. Peter Coss, The Lady in Medieval England, 1000-1500 (Alan Sutton, 1998)
5. Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds, Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: the Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (Routledge,1994)
6. P. J. P. Goldberg, Woman is a Worthy Wight: Women in English Society, c. 1200-1500 (Alan Sutton, 1992)
7. Helen M. Jewell, Women in Medieval England (Manchester University Press, 1996)
8. Margaret Wade Laberge, Women in Medieval Life: a Small Sound of the Trumpet (Hamilton Press, 1986)
9. Carolyne Larrington, Women and Writing in Medieval Europe (Routledge,1995)
10. Henrietta Leyser, Medieval Women: a Social History of Women in England, 450-1500 (Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1995)

Additional Information
 

Document for lecture 1: What was a medieval woman?

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This page is maintained by Dr Helen Nicholson and was last updated 22 September 2004