Domestic Violence In Medieval Texts

''Challenges readers to acknowledge the extent to which violence figured in medieval texts and, with this recognition, to reconsider what the works teach us not only about the treatments and troping of victims in the medieval world but also how these patterns are a part of the social history of domestic violence.

"Challenges readers to acknowledge the extent to which violence figured in medieval texts and, with this recognition, to reconsider what the works teach us not only about the treatments and troping of victims in the medieval world but also how these patterns are a part of the social history of domestic violence."--Ann Dobyns, University of Denver Domestic Violence in Medieval Texts addresses a topic critical to our understanding of the medieval past--its notions of childhood and marital relations, its attitudes toward corporal punishment, and its contribution to the shaping of our present-day notions of family values. Using a wide range of late medieval narratives, including poetry, law, sermons, saints' lives, drama, and iconography, the authors explore the meaning and social effects of punitive violence within the domestic sphere. As the first collection to analyze such early manifestations of a problem still afflicting society today, it will be an insightful reference not only for medievalists but for students of literature, history, sociology, psychology, and law as well. Contents: Introduction, by Eve Salisbury, Georgiana Donavin, and Merrall Llewelyn Price Part One. Domestic Violence and the Law 1. Interpreting Silence: Domestic Violence in the King's Courts in East Anglia, 1422-1442, by Philippa Maddern 2. The "Reasonable" Laws of Domestic Violence in Late Medieval England, by Emma Hawkes Part Two. Fictional Histories: Domestic Violence and Literary/Legal Texts 3. Chaucer's "Wife," the Law, and the Middle English Breton Lays, by Eve Salisbury 4. Taboo and Transgression in Gower's Appollonius of Tyre, by Georgiana Donavin 5. Reframing the Violence of the Father: Reverse Oedipal Fantasies in Chaucer's Clerk's, Man of Law's, and Prioress's Tales, by Barrie Ruth Straus 6. Not Safe Even in Their Own Castles: Reading Domestic Violence Against Children in Four Middle English Romances, by Graham N. Drake 7. Domestic Violence in the Decameron, by Marilyn Migiel 8. Reading Riannon: The Problematics of Motherhood in Pwyll Pendeuic, by Christopher G. Nugent Part Three. Historical Fictions: Domestic Violence in Chronicle, Drama, Hagiography, and Illuminations 9. The "Homicidal Women" Stories in the Roman de Thebes, the Brut Chronicles, and Deschamps' "Ballade 285," by Anna Roberts 10. Noah's Wife: The Shaming of the "Trew," by Garrett P. J. Epp 11. Marriage, Socialization, and Domestic Violence in The Life of Christina of Markyate, by Robert Stanton 12. Imperial Violence and the Monstrous Mother: Cannibalism at the Siege of Jerusalem, by Merrall Llewelyn Price 13. The Feminized World and Divine Violence: Texts and Images of the Apocalypse, by Anne Laskaya Eve Salisbury is assistant professor of English at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. Georgiana Donavin is associate professor of English at Westminster College, Salt Lake City. Merrall L. Price has written articles on violence in the Middle Ages and is currently pursuing research on anti-Semitism and reproductive politics in late medieval Europe and contemporary North America.

This volume brings together specialists from different areas of medieval literary study to focus on the role of habits of thought in shaping attitudes toward women during the Middle Ages. The essays range from Old English literature to the Spanish Inquisition and encompass such genres as romance, chronicles, hagiography, and legal documents.

This ground-breaking volume assesses the contemporary epidemic of intimate partner violence and explores how and why cultural and religious beliefs serve to excuse battering and to work against survivors’ attempts to find safety. Theological interpretations of sacred texts have been used for centuries to justify or minimize violence against women. The authors recover historical and especially medieval narratives whose protagonists endure violence that is framed by religious texts or arguments. The medieval theological themes that redeem battering in saints’ lives—suffering, obedience, ownership and power—continue today in most religious traditions. This insightful book emphasizes Christian history and theology, but the authors signal contributions from interfaith studies to efforts against partner violence. Examining medieval attitudes and themes sharpens the readers’ understanding of contemporary violence against women. Analyzing both historical and contemporary narratives from a religious perspective grounds the unique approach of Nienhuis and Kienzle, one that forges a new path in grappling with partner violence. Medieval and contemporary narratives alike demonstrate that women in abusive relationships feel the burden of religious beliefs that enjoin wives to endure suffering and to maintain stable marriages. Religious leaders have reminded women of wives’ responsibility for obedience to husbands, even in the face of abuse. In some narratives, however, women create safe places for themselves. Moreover, some exemplary communities call upon religious belief to support their opposition to violence. Such models of historical resistance reveal precedents for response through intervention or protection.

Although courtly literature is often associated with a chivalrous and idyllic life, the fifteen original essays in this collection demonstrate that the quest for love in the world of medieval courtly literature was underpinned by violence. Lovers were rejected, mistrust ruled, rape was a rampant problem, and marriage was often characterized by brutality. Albrecht Classen brings together an outstanding group of historical, cultural, and literary scholars in this volume to investigate the complicated, nuanced, and often surprising unions of love and violence in courtly medieval literature.

Studies of ways in which the rapidly evolving society of medieval Europe developed social, legal and practical responses to public and private violence. Violence was endemic in the medieval world, to an extent most modern people find shocking. Violence was part and parcel of the public world of institutions [church, state, chivalry] and the private world of households. In an age of dynamic expansion it was present everywhere, and contemporary response to it was contradictory: it was both wrong and at the same time a regulatory feature of society. This book brings together the views of a number of scholarson aspects of violence in medieval society, in England and the larger canvas of western Europe, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. There is analysis of the tension between the practice of violence and hopes for reform; discussion of violence in literature; examination of assertive political acts and judicial duels and tournaments; and observations on the domestic scene and resistance to seigneurial impositions. Professor RICHARD W. KAEUPER teaches in the Department of History at the University of Rochester. Contributors: SARAH KAY, RICHARD W. KAEUPER, MATTHEW STRICKLAND, SEYMOUR PHILLIPS, M.L. BOHNA, PAUL HYAMS, AMY PHELAN, JULIET VALE, MALCOLM VALE, JAMES A.BRUNDAGE, BARBARA A. HANAWALT, EDMUND FRYDE

This book is first in its field to analyze how disability and gender both thematically and formally operate within late medieval popular literature. Reading romance, conduct manuals, and spiritual autobiography, it proposes a 'gendered model' for exploring the processes by which differences like gender and disability get coded as deviant.

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