Rivalrous Masculinities

New Directions in Medieval Gender Studies

Ann Marie Rasmussen

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780268105570
• eBook ISBN: 9780268105594
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

Bringing together the work of both leading and emerging scholars in the field of medieval gender studies, the essays in Rivalrous Masculinities advance our understanding of medieval masculinity as a pluralized category and as an intersectional category of gender. The essays in this volume are distinguished by a conceptual focus that goes beyond heteronormativity and by their attention to constructions of medieval masculinity in the context of femininity, class, religion, and place. Some widen the field of medieval gender studies inquiry to include explorations of medieval friendship as a framework or culture of arousal and deep emotionality that produced multiple, complex ways of living intensely with respect to gender and sexuality, without reducing all forms of intimacy to implicit sexuality. Some examine intersections of identity, explicating change and difference in conventional modes of gender with regards to regional culture, religion, race, or class. In order to ground this intersectional and interdisciplinary approach with the appropriate disciplinary expertise, the essays in this volume represent a broad cross-section of disciplines: art history, religious studies, history, and French, Italian, German, Yiddish, Middle English, and Old English literature. Together, they open up new intellectual vistas for future research in the field of medieval gender studies.

Contributors include: Ann Marie Rasmussen, Clare A. Lees, Gillian R. Overing, J. Christian Straubhaar-Jones, Astrid Lembke, Darrin Cox, F. Regina Psaki, Corinne Wieben, Ruth Mazo Karras, Diane Wolfthal, Karma Lochrie, and Andreas Krass.

INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to figures.

Abelard, Peter, 158

Abravanel, Isaac, 157

Accuser, the (literary character)

biblical examples of, 108–12

classical antiquity examples of, 112–16

debate strategy of, 105–6, 117–18

generic accusations of, 116–17

masculinity articulated by, 118

masculinity modeled by, 118–19

Achilles, 107, 117, 119

Ackerman, Susan, 152

Adah (biblical figure), 108–9

Adam (biblical figure), 108

Aelred of Rievaulx, 238–40

Affective Turn, The (Hardt), 28

affects

in chivalric masculinity, 47

embodiment of, 28–29, 33–34

in hrēoh compound terms, 30–33, 39

intersection between masculinity and, 10–11, 28, 29, 32–34, 37–38, 39

weather terms describing, 27–28, 30–33, 39

Akiva (rabbi), 72–73

Alexander, Jonathan J. G., 185, 204n23

Altrock, Stephanie, 54n4

Amazon women, 218–20

Amelius and Amicus legend, 159

Amnon (biblical figure), 155–56

Andrea (rector of San Michele), 144–45

Andrea of Todi (episcopal judge), 131–32, 135

Angelomus of Luxeuil (monk), 156

angels, 44, 143

Anglo, Sydney, 98n37

Anselm of Canterbury, 240

anticlericalism, 141, 142, 145

Armstrong, C. A. J., 82

Arnold, John H., 5

Asch, Ronald G., 92

autohagiographies, 42, 54n3

Avot (Mishnaic tractate), 155–56

Baines, Richard, 243–44

Baker-Smith, Dominic, 83

Bathsheba (biblical figure), 109–10, 128n22

Battle of Maldon, The (poem), 30

Bayard, seigneur de (Pierre Terrail), 84

Bede, Saint, 156

“Beloved Disciple Leaves His Bride for Jesus, The” (illustration), 241

Bening, Simon, 180

Bennett, Judith M., 11, 20

Bennewitz, Ingrid, xi, xii

Benson, Pamela, 128n26, 129n37

Bentham, Jeremy, 244

Benthien, Claudia, xi–xii

Benvenuto di Nello Quintevallis (episcopal court litigant), 131–32, 138–41

Beowulf (Old English epic)

affective impasses in, 32–34

Heremod’s affective struggles in, 34–37

heroic warrior culture in, 37–38, 39

masculine crises in, 29–38

“Precepts” contrasted to, 18

scholarly critical stances on, 37

use of hrēoh compounds in, 29–32

“Beowulf: A Poem in Our Time” (Overing), 10

“Beowulf on Gender” (Overing), 10

Berengario II (bishop), 134, 135

Berger, Harry, Jr., 98n37

Berry, duke of (Jean of Berry), 178, 185, 190, 194

Between Medieval Men (Clark), 8

Biale, David, 59

Billacois, François, 82

“Birth of Jupiter” (painting), 192, 194

“Birth of St. John the Baptist” (painting), 193

“Birth of the Virgin” (painting), 192

bishops. See clergy

Bitton, Davis, 83

Blamires, Alcuin, 123, 126n4, 127n11

Boccaccio, Giovanni, 121, 122, 123, 219

Book of the Courtier, The (Castiglione), 81

Book of the Fortune’s Transformation, The (Pizan), 223, 224–28

Book of the It (Groddeck), 245–46

Book of the Laws of the Torah, 63–64

Boswell, John, 242–43

Bosworth, Joseph, 27

Bourdichon, Jean, 182–84

Boyarin, Daniel, 58, 63, 72–73

Brady, Sean, 5

bridal mysticism, 50, 239

Brown, Dan, 234–37

Brown, Judith, 136

Brown, Michelle, 207n55

Bueil, Jean de, 81, 85, 92

Burgundy, duchess of (Margaret of Bavaria), 192

Burgundy, duke of (Charles the Bold), 184, 189–90

Burgundy, duke of (John the Fearless), 192

Burgundy, duke of (Philip the Good), 192, 195

Butler, Judith, 4, 18, 210

Butler, Sara, 138

Byron and Greek Love (Crompton), 244

Camille, Michael, 185, 189, 190

Canterbury Codex, 240

Canterbury Tales, The (Chaucer), 145–46

Carroll,...

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• ONE. A Word to the Wise: Men, Gender, and Medieval Masculinities
• TWO. Men in Trouble: Warrior Angst in Beowulf
• THREE. The Rivalry of the Secular and the Spiritual in the Masculine Personae of Henry Suso’s The Life of the Servant
• FOUR. Predicaments of Piousness: The Trouble with Being a Learned Jewish Family Man in Premodern Europe
• FIVE. The Knight versus the Courtier
• SIX. Misogyny, Philogyny, Masculinities: Antonio Pucci’s Il Contrasto delle donne
• SEVEN. Virtù: Marriage, Gender, and Competing Masculinities in Fourteenth-Century Lucca
• EIGHT. David and Jonathan: A Late Medieval Bromance
• NINE. When Did Servants Become Men?
• TEN. Medieval Masculinities without Men
• ELEVEN. The Beloved Disciple: From the Gospel of John to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code
• List of Contributors
• Index