Table Of ContentA R
The training and use of memory was
N
crucial in medieval culture, given the E
D C
limited literacy at the time, but, to date,
O
very little thought has been given to the M
N
complex and disparate ways in which
E S
theories and practices of memory inter- M I
D
acted with the inherently unstable O
E
concepts of time and gender prevalent R R
during the period. Drawing on approaches Y I
N
from applied poststructural and queer I
N G
theory among others, the essays in this
G
volume reassess those ideologies, meanings M
and responses generated by the workings E
E N
of memory within and over “time”. D
D
Ultimately, they argue for the fundamental I
E E
instability of the traditional gender-time-
V R
memory matrix (within which men are A ,
configured as the recorders of “history” L T
and women as the repositories of a more CI
M
inchoate familial and communal U
E
knowledge), revealing the Middle Ages as L
T
a locus for a far more fluid concept-
U
ualization of gender, time and memory
R
than has previously been considered.
E
R
ELIZABETH COX is Lecturer in Old English at Swansea University; ROBERTA
C
MAGNANI is Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Swansea University; LIZ O
HERBERT MCAVOYis Professor of Medieval Literature at Swansea University. X
, M econsidering
CONTRIBUTORS: Anne E. Bailey, Daisy Black, Elizabeth Cox, Fiona Harris- C
A
Stoertz, Ayoush Lazikani, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Pamela E. Morgan, William V Gender, Time
O
Rogers, Patricia Skinner, Victoria Turner.
Y
A
N
Cover illustration: ‘Horlogue de Sapience’ (Clock of Wisdom). Henry Suso, Horlogue de D and Memory in
Sapience. Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS IV.III, f. 13v. By kind permission
M
of Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique.
A
G
N Medieval Culture
Gender in the Middle Ages A
N
I
(
e
d
s
)
Edited by Elizabeth Cox,
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd Liz Herbert McAvoy
PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620–2731 (US) and Roberta Magnani
www.boydellandbrewer.com
Gender in the Middle Ages
Volume 10
ReconsideRing gendeR, Time and
memoRy in medieval culTuRe
Gender in the Middle Ages
issn 1742–870X
Series Editors
Jacqueline murray
diane Watt
Editorial Board
clare lees
Katherine J. lewis
Karma lochrie
This series investigates the representation and construction of masculinity and femininity
in the middle ages from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. it
aims in particular to explore the diversity of medieval genders, and such interrelated
contexts and issues as sexuality, social class, race and ethnicity, and orthodoxy and hetero-
doxy.
Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editors or to the publisher,
at the addresses given below; all submissions will receive prompt and informed consid-
eration.
Professor Jacqueline murray, college of arts, university of guelph, guelph, ontario, n1g
2W1, canada
Professor diane Watt, school of english and languages, university of surrey, guildford,
surrey gu5 7XH, uK
Boydell & Brewer limited, Po Box 9, Woodbridge, suffolk, iP12 3dF, uK
also in this series:
i Gender and Medieval Drama, Katie normington, 2004
ii Gender and Petty Crime in Late Medieval England, Karen Jones, 2006
iii The Pastoral Care of Women in Late Medieval England, Beth allison Barr, 2008
iv Gender, Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury, Kirsten a.
Fenton, 2008
v Monsters, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature, dana m. oswald, 2010
vi Medieval Anchoritisms: Gender, Space and the Solitary Life, liz Herbert mcavoy, 2011
vii Middle-Aged Women in the Middle Ages, edited by sue niebrzydowski, 2011
viii Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe, edited by cordelia
Beattie and matthew Frank stevens, 2013
iX Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages, edited by P. H. cullum and
Katherine J. lewis, 2013
ReconsideRing gendeR, Time and
memoRy in medieval culTuRe
edited by
Elizabeth Cox, Liz Herbert McAvoy and Roberta Magnani
d. s. BReWeR
© contributors 2015
All Rights Reserved. except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
First published 2015
d. s. Brewer, cambridge
isBn 978 1 84384 403 7
d. s. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer ltd
Po Box 9, Woodbridge, suffolk iP12 3dF, uK
and of Boydell & Brewer inc.
668 mt Hope avenue, Rochester, ny 14620–2731, usa
website: www.boydellandbrewer.co.uk
a ciP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British library
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy
of uRls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
conTenTs
List of Contributors vii
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xii
introduction: In principio: The Queer matrix of gender, Time 1
and memory in the middle ages
Liz Herbert McAvoy
1 The Pitfalls of linear Time: using the medieval Female life-cycle 13
as an organizing strategy
Patricia Skinner
2 medieval expiration dating? Queer Time and spatial dislocation 29
in Aucassin et Nicolette
Victoria Turner
3 Remembering Birth in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-century 45
england
Fiona Harris-Stoertz
4 ‘ides gnornode/geomrode giddum’: Remembering the Role of 61
a friðusibb in the Retelling of the Fight at Finnsburg in Beowulf
Elizabeth Cox
5 Remembrance and Time in the Wooing Group 79
Ayoush Lazikani
6 gendered strategies of Time and memory in the Writing of Julian 95
of norwich and the Recluse of Winchester
Liz Herbert McAvoy
7 gendered discourses of Time and memory in the cult and 111
Hagiography of William of norwich
Anne E. Bailey
8 Re-membering saintly Relocations: The Rewriting of saint 127
congar’s life within the gendered context of Romance
narratives
Pamela E. Morgan
9 a man out of Time: Joseph, Time and space in the n-Town 147
marian Plays
Daisy Black
10 dismembering gender and age: Replication, Rebirth and 163
Remembering in The Phoenix
William Rogers
Bibliography 179
Index 199
conTRiBuToRs
Anne E. Bailey completed her doctorate in July 2010 and from 2010 to
2013 held a postdoctoral research fellowship at Harris manchester college,
university of oxford. she is currently researching and teaching at oxford as
an affiliated member of the History Faculty. Her research interests include
saints’ cults and pilgrimage, hagiography, women’s religious history and
gender, focusing chiefly on england during the High middle ages.
Daisy Black is lecturer in medieval and early modern literature at the
university of Hull. she completed her Ph.d. at the university of manchester
with her thesis, ‘mind the gap: Time, gender and conflict in the late medi-
eval mystery Plays’. Her research interests include periodization; cornish
religious drama; medieval depictions of Jews and saracens; narratives of
cannibalism and their relation to the eucharist, and examining dramatic
performance as a means of reassessing lay theologies during the early Refor-
mation. she is also currently writing a dramatization of the Bayeux Tapestry.
Elizabeth Cox was awarded her Ph.d. from swansea university in 2013.
Her doctoral thesis was entitled ‘discerning Women: unravelling enclosed
Female identities in secular Texts 900–1300’, in which she considered the
representations of the many ways in which women are enclosed within
male- and female-authored texts of the period. Her current research interests
include the enclosure of women in anglo-saxon and anglo-norman texts,
and the intersection of temporal, spatial, linguistic and physical borders. she
is currently teaching old english at swansea university.
Fiona Harris-Stoertz received her Ph.d. from the university of california
at santa Barbara and is currently associate Professor of medieval History
at Trent university in Peterborough, canada. she is the author of several
articles and book chapters on gender, childbirth, childhood, and adolescence
during the High middle ages, and is currently working on a monograph on
high-medieval pregnancy and childbirth.
Ayoush Lazikani is currently stipendiary lecturer in old and middle english
at the university of oxford. Her research focuses on the languages of affec-
tive stirrings and pain in early middle english, latin and anglo-norman
devotional texts of the High middle ages. she has a forthcoming mono-
vii
Contributors
graph in this area: Cultivating the Heart: Feeling and Emotion in Twelfth- and
Thirteenth-Century Religious Texts (cardiff: university of Wales Press, 2015).
Liz Herbert McAvoy is Professor of medieval literature at swansea univer-
sity. Her main research interest is medieval literature written by, for or
about women, particularly devotional texts from the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. interested also in issues of gender, space and enclosure, she has
published widely on medieval anchoritic writings and mystical works written
by men and women, including Authority and the Female Body in the Writings
of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (2004) and Medieval Anchoritisms:
Gender, Space and the Solitary Life (2011). she has also edited a wide range
of essay collections on these and associated topics.
Roberta Magnani is lecturer in english literature at swansea university,
where she teaches medieval and early-modern literature as well as gender
theory. interested in the works of geoffrey chaucer and, more broadly, in the
intersection between manuscript studies and queer theory, she is currently
completing a monograph entitled Chaucer’s Queer Textualities: Manuscripts
and the Challenging of Authority for the new middle ages series published
by Palgrave macmillan (forthcoming in 2016). she also has research interests
in medieval medicine and gendered spaces such as the hortus conclusus.
Pamela E. Morgan has recently completed a Ph.d. at swansea university
entitled ‘saints and edges in anglo-saxon england’. This project explores
representations of saints in anglo-saxon (vernacular and latin) texts with
attention to cultural context and theories of liminality.
William Rogers is a lecturer in the english department at case Western
Reserve university and holds a Ph.d. in english literature and language
from cornell university, where he specialized in the literature of the late
fourteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. His main research interests
include the history of the book, especially the transition from script to print,
queer theory and disability studies. He is currently revising his doctoral
dissertation, ‘Rewriting old age from chaucer to shakespeare: The inven-
tion of english senex style’, into a book that examines depictions of old age in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and their ties to prosthesis as rhetorical
strategy and corporeal addition. currently, he reviews Piers Plowman schol-
arship for The Year’s Work in English.
Patricia Skinner is Reader in medieval History at Winchester university
and Wellcome Research Fellow in the History of medicine. she is currently
working on a Wellcome Trust-funded project ‘losing Face? living with
disfigurement in medieval europe’, and is the co-editor (with elisabeth van
Houts) of Medieval Writings on Secular Women (london, 2011). she has
viii
Contributors
published extensively in the fields of gender, Jewish and italian medieval
history.
Victoria Turner is a lecturer in French at the university of st andrews.
she completed her doctoral thesis at the university of Warwick in 2013 and
is currently working on a monograph on representations of the saracen
and notions of race and identity in medieval French literature. Her current
research interests also include the narration and translation of medieval
travel accounts and the experience of space.
ix
