Constructions of widowhood and virginity in the Middle Ages
By: edited by Cindy L. Carlson and Angela Jane Weisl
Contributors: Carlson, Cindy L., 1953-; Weisl, Angela Jane, 1963-
Edition: 1st ed
Series: The new Middle Ages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
Subjects: Literature, Medieval -- History and criticism; Women and literature -- Europe -- History -- To 1500; Virginity in literature; Chastity in literature; Widows in literature
Description: "To be a virgin or a widow never promised a stable, uniform status to a woman during the Middle Ages. Rather, these positions were areas of contestation; constructions that did, and still do, create and interrogate notions of gender roles, areas of power, and areas of disability. Chastity, for one example, is an apparent given for both positions, but chastity at the time invoked any number of cultural meanings and practices.

The essays in Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages address many facets of these two positions specific to women in medieval literature."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index
Table of contents: title: Constructions of widowhood and virginity / Cindy L. Carlson and Angela Jane Weisl; title: Helpful widows, virgins in distress: women's friendship in French romance of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries / Anna Roberts; title: The widow as virgin: desexualized narrative in Christine de Pizan's Livre de la cité des dames / Angela Jane Weisl; title: Closed doors: an epithalamium for Queen Edith, widow and virgin / Monika Otter; title: Performing virginity: sex and violence in the Katherine Group / Sarah Salih; title: The paradox of virginity within the Anchoritic tradition: the masculine gaze and the feminine body in the Wohunge Group / Susannah Mary Chewning; title: Useful virgins in medieval hagiography / Kathleen Coyne Kelly; title: Virginity and sacrifice in Chaucer's "Physician's tale" / Sandra Pierson Prior; title: Blood and rosaries: virginity, violence, and desire in Chaucer's "Prioress's tale" / Kathleen M. Hobbs; title: Like a virgin: Mary and her doubters in the N-town cycle / Cindy L. Carlson; title: Between the living and the dead: widows as heroines of medieval romances / Rebecca Hayward; title: The widow's tears: the pedagogy of grief in medieval France and the image of the grieving widow / Leslie Abend Callahan