Gender and Memory in Medieval Europe - Softcover

Van Houts, Elisabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802082777 ISBN 13: 9780802082770

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 1999

Synopsis

Tracing the oral and written memories of families and monastic communities through chronicles, saints' lives, and material objects such as jewellery and memorial stones, Elisabeth van Houts argues that in the Middle Ages, as now, the knowledge of the past was shaped by men as well as women. Men may have dominated the pages of literature but many of the stories they wrote were told to them by women. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 provides a case study to illustrate the ways in which one memorable event reverberated through the generations. In England and Normandy, men and women remembered their ancestors' experiences: the worst were kept alive orally for a long time before they were written down, the best were put on paper straight away.

About this title

About the Author

Elisabeth van Houts teaches Medieval History at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She has published widely on Anglo-Norman history and medieval historiography.

Review

'Van Houts is much too experienced a historian to overstate women's contribution to the memorialising of the medieval past: what she rightly insists on, and what gives this book its cutting edge, is that women's contribution be recognised as important and distinctive...she has produced a book that's timely, path-breaking, and emphatically more than the sum of its parts.' - Janet L. Nelson, Gender and History

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0802082777
• ISBN 13: 9780802082770
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256