Women's Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination

Matrilineal Legacies in the High Middle Ages

Emma O. Bérat

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009434768
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Uncovering the many striking female alternatives to patrilineal narratives in medieval texts, Emma O. Bérat explores strategies of writing and illustration that creatively and purposefully depict women's legacies. Genealogy, used to justify a character's present power and project it onto the future, was crucial to medieval political, literary, and historical thought. While patrilineage often limited women to exceptional or passive roles, other genealogical forms that represent and promote women's claims are widespread in medieval texts. Female characters transmit power through book patronage and reading, enduring landmarks, and international travel, as well as childbearing and succession. These flexible – if messy – genealogies reflect the web of political, biological, and spiritual relations that frequently characterized elite women's lives. Examining hagiography, chronicles, genealogical rolls, and French, English, and Latin romances, as well as associated codices and images, Bérat highlights the centrality of female characters and historical women to this fundamental aspect of medieval consciousness.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Series information
• Title page
• Imprints page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Note on the Text
• Introduction: Women's Genealogies
• Chapter 1 The Book as Bloodline: The Life of Queen Margaret of Scotland
• Chapter 2 Records on the Landscape: Landmarks in Audrée, Osith, and Modwenne
• Chapter 3 Tracing Mobility: Royal Genealogical Diagrams and Trevet's Les Cronicles
• Chapter 4 Mothers and Messengers: Violent Transmission in Athelston
• Conclusion: Matrilineal Legacies
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series Page