Description

Conduct Becoming examines a new genre of late medieval writing that focuses on a wife's virtuous conduct and ability of such conduct to alter marital and social relations in the world. Considering a range of texts written for women—the journées chrétiennes or daily guides for Christian living, secular counsel from husbands and fathers such as Le Livre du Chevalier de La Tour Landry and Le Menagier de Paris, and literary narratives such as the Griselda story—Glenn D. Burger argues that, over the course of the long fourteenth century, the "invention" of the good wife in discourses of sacramental marriage, private devotion, and personal conduct reconfigured how female embodiment was understood.
While the period inherits a strongly antifeminist tradition that views the female body as naturally wayward and sensual, late medieval conduct texts for women outline models of feminine virtue that show the good wife as an identity with positive influence in the world. Because these manuals imagine how to be a good wife as necessarily entangled with how to be a good husband, they also move their readers to consider such gendered and sexed identities in relational terms and to embrace a model of self-restraint significantly different from that of clerical celibacy. Conduct literature addressed to the good wife thus reshapes how late medieval audiences thought about the process of becoming a good person more generally. Burger contends that these texts develop and promulgate a view of sex and gender radically different from previous clerical or aristocratic models—one capable of providing the foundations for the modern forms of heterosexuality that begin to emerge more clearly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Conduct Becoming: Good Wives and Husbands in the Later Middle Ages

Product form

£60.30

Includes FREE delivery
RRP: £67.00 You save £6.70 (10%)
Usually despatched within 5 days
Hardback by Glenn D. Burger

1 in stock

Short Description:

Conduct Becoming examines a new genre of late medieval writing that focuses on a wife's virtuous conduct and ability of... Read more

    Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
    Publication Date: 27/10/2017
    ISBN13: 9780812249606, 978-0812249606
    ISBN10: 0812249607

    Number of Pages: 272

    Non Fiction , ELT & Literary Studies , Education

    Description

    Conduct Becoming examines a new genre of late medieval writing that focuses on a wife's virtuous conduct and ability of such conduct to alter marital and social relations in the world. Considering a range of texts written for women—the journées chrétiennes or daily guides for Christian living, secular counsel from husbands and fathers such as Le Livre du Chevalier de La Tour Landry and Le Menagier de Paris, and literary narratives such as the Griselda story—Glenn D. Burger argues that, over the course of the long fourteenth century, the "invention" of the good wife in discourses of sacramental marriage, private devotion, and personal conduct reconfigured how female embodiment was understood.
    While the period inherits a strongly antifeminist tradition that views the female body as naturally wayward and sensual, late medieval conduct texts for women outline models of feminine virtue that show the good wife as an identity with positive influence in the world. Because these manuals imagine how to be a good wife as necessarily entangled with how to be a good husband, they also move their readers to consider such gendered and sexed identities in relational terms and to embrace a model of self-restraint significantly different from that of clerical celibacy. Conduct literature addressed to the good wife thus reshapes how late medieval audiences thought about the process of becoming a good person more generally. Burger contends that these texts develop and promulgate a view of sex and gender radically different from previous clerical or aristocratic models—one capable of providing the foundations for the modern forms of heterosexuality that begin to emerge more clearly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

    Customer Reviews

    Be the first to write a review
    0%
    (0)
    0%
    (0)
    0%
    (0)
    0%
    (0)
    0%
    (0)

    Recently viewed products

    © 2024 Book Curl,

      • American Express
      • Apple Pay
      • Diners Club
      • Discover
      • Google Pay
      • Maestro
      • Mastercard
      • PayPal
      • Shop Pay
      • Union Pay
      • Visa

      Login

      Forgot your password?

      Don't have an account yet?
      Create account