Medieval women hunting
Medieval women 'had girl power'
A new study by an academic says that "girl power" was alive and kicking around 600 years ago.
Dr Sue Niebrzydowski at Bangor university said medieval women enjoyed a golden era with a greater life expectancy than men.
"We found women running priories, commissioning books, taking early package tours to visit the Holy Land," she said.
She added women were also defending their property and property rights.
Dr Niebrzydowski's research involving middle aged women in the middle ages will be discussed at a conference at the university on Wednesday.
The medievalist at Bangor's Institute of Early and Modern Studies, studied legal records, literature and songs to build up a picture of life for women between the 12th and 15th Centuries.
Dr Niebrzydowski, whose research is funded by the Royal Historical Society and the British Academy, said: "Women were often widowed by the age of 30 and it gave them greater freedom.
"They could be more sexually liberated as there would be no child as evidence of their fornication or adultery.
'Misconceptions'
"And if wealthy, they could enter the marriage market on their own terms - and for their own reasons, whether economic, for love, companionship or pleasure."
The study's findings will be explored on Wednesday at a conference in Bangor, attended by some of Britain's top female academics in the fields of archaeology, history, language and law.
Dr Niebrzydowski said: "We assume that women in the past had little economic independence or social power and that they were reliant on fathers or husbands for most of their lives.
"But we should be wary of holding too many misconceptions about women's lives in the past.
"It is true that most of the information we have is drawn from art, literature or historical records which relate to wealthier women, but middle aged women in the middle ages had far more power and independence than we might first imagine."
The conference, which runs until Friday, will bring together experts in literature, archaeology, art and history.
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Rating:  (Based on 3 Reviews)Author: Eileen PowerPublisher: Cambridge University Press; New Ed edition (October 13, 1997)Languages: EnglishISBN-10: 0521595568ASIN: 0521595568Price: $14.99 |
Medieval Women in their third age: Middle Age in the Middle Ages
* Date: 12 - 14 September 2007
* Description: This conference gathers together established scholars internationally renowned for their work on medieval womanhood. The papers are drawn from a variety of related disciplines; history, literary history, archaeology, art history and theology, and pose radical and provocative questions about the way in which the middle-aged woman perceived herself and how she was perceived by others. Keynote speaker: Anneke Mulder-Bakker. Featured speakers; Roberta Gilchrist, Clare Lees, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Nicola McDonald, Carol Meale, Sue Niebrzydowski, Helen Phillips, Miri Rubin, Raluca Radulescu, Corinne Saunders and Diane Watt.
* Details: website; conference flier (pdf file, 388KB); conference flier (pdf file, 404KB)
* Conference organisers: Dr Sue Niebrzydowski
* Venue: University of Wales, Bangor
* Contact: Dr Sue Niebrzydowski
* Email:
* Tel:
* Fax:
* Address: School of English, University of Wales,
* Deadlines: registration: 24 August 2007
Dr Sue Niebrzydowski MA, PhD, PGCHE
Research Profile
I work on women and the dialogue between literature and cultural texts that attempt to construct paradigms of medieval womanhood. While virgins and widows have had plenty of scholarly and popular attention, in monographs, novels and films, wives � and the middle aged � have not. Why not? Arising from my recent monograph examining wives in late medieval literature my current project � culminating in a forthcoming conference (September 2007) and a volume of edited essays - is an interrogation of middle-aged women in the Middle Ages.
My other main research interest is medieval English presentations of Mary: how these are determined by contemporary constructions of womanhood and how real medieval women responded to the Mother of God. Under the auspices of IMEMS I am at the planning stage of a collaborative project examining the specifics of medieval Marian devotion in the British Isles.
Major Publications
��So wel koude he me glose�: The Erotics of Touch in the Wife of Bath�s Prologue�, Eroticism in Medieval Literature, ed. Cory Rushton and Amanda Hopkins (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007).
Bonoure and Buxum: A Study of Wives in Late Medieval English Literature (New York: Peter Lang AG, 2006)
�From Scriptorium to Internet: the implication of audience on the translation of the Psalms from the St Albans Psalter�, Translation and Religion: Holy Untranslatable?, ed. Lynne Long, (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, June 2005), 151-61.
�Encouraging Marriage IN FACIE ECCLESIAE: The Mary Play �Betrothal� and the Sarum Ordo ad faciendum Sponsalia�, Medieval English Theatre 24 (2002), 44-61.
AHRC Funded Translation and Explanatory Commentary of the Calendar, Psalter and Canticles of the online edition (2003) of the St Albans Psalter,�Monstrous (M)othering: The Representation of the Sowdanesse in Chaucer�s Man of Law�s Tale�, Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed.Liz Herbert McAvoy and Teresa Walters (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002), 196-207.
The Sultana and Her Sisters: Black Women in the British Isles before 1530,� Women�s History Review 10.2 (2001), 187-210.
Current Support for Others' Research
Research Lecturer, Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies and the School of English, tasked with developing the Research Group women and the sacred.
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Rating:  (Based on 16 Reviews)Author: Steven OzmentPublisher: Harper Perennial; 1st Perennial ed edition (April 9, 1997)Languages: EnglishISBN-10: 0060977213ASIN: 0060977213Price: $11.05 |
