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Gendering the Master Narrative asks whether a female tradition of power might have existed distinct from the male one, and how such a tradition might have been transmitted. It describes women’s progress toward power as a push-pull movement, showing how practices and institutions that ostensibly enabled women in the Middle Ages could sometimes erode their authority as well.
This book provides a much-needed theoretical and historical reassessment of medieval women’s power. It updates the conclusions from the editors’ essential volume on that topic, Women and Power in the Middle Ages, which was published in 1988 and altered the prevailing view of female subservience by correcting the nearly ubiquitous equation of “power” with “public authority.” Most scholars now accept a broader definition of power based on the interactions between men and women.
In their Introduction, Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski survey the directions in which the study of medieval women’s agency has developed in the past fifteen years. Like its predecessor, this volume is richly interdisciplinary. It contains essays by highly regarded scholars of history, literature, and art history, and features seventeen black-and-white illustrations and two maps.
Dyan Elliott, Indiana University
Mary C. Erler, Fordham University
Katherine L. French, State University of New York, New Paltz
Holly S. Hurlburt, Southern Illinois University
Maryanne Kowaleski, Fordham University
Wendy R. Larson, Roanoke College
Jo Ann McNamara, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
Barbara Newman, Northwestern University
Sarah Rees Jones, University of York
Felicity Riddy, University of York
Pamela Sheingorn, Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York,
Nicholas Watson, Harvard University
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Fordham University
Reviews
"Interdisciplinary essays on the exercise and transmission of female power in medieval society." (The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 25, 2003) “By entitling this collection Gendering the Master Narrative, editors Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski intend to prepare readers for the fact that the essays supplement the story of men’s access to and wielding of power in European Middle Ages with the story of women’s.””—Conrad Leyser, University of Manchester, American Historical Review, February 2005
About the Author
Mary C. Erler is Professor of English and Maryanne Kowaleski is Professor of History at Fordham University.
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