Description
Book SynopsisAn original and highly accessible collection of essays which is based on a huge range of historical sources to reveal the realities of mens' lives in the Middle Ages. It covers an impressive geographical range - including essays on Italy, France, Germany and Byzantium - and will span the entire medieval period, from the fourth to the fifteenth century. The collection is divided into four main sections: attaining masculinity; lay men and churchmen: sources of tension; sexuality and the construction of masculinity; and written relationships and social reality.The contributors are:Dawn Hadley, Jenny Moore, William M. Aird, Jeremy Goldberg, Matthew Bennet, Janet Nelson, Conrad Leyser, Robert Swanson, Patricia Cullum, Ross Balzaretti, Shaun Tougher, Julian Haseldine, Marianne Ailes and Mark Chinca.
Table of ContentsIntroduction. 1. Medieval Masculinities? PART ONE: ATTAINING MASCULINITY. 2. `Death maketh the man': The construction of masculinity in the early Middle Ages. 3. Frustrated masculinity: The relationship between William the Conqueror and his eldest son. 4. Masters and men in later medieval England. 5. The masculine military ethos c. 1050-1250. PART TWO: LAY MEN AND CHURCH MEN: SOURCES OF TENSION. 6. Monks, secular men and masculinity c. 900. 7. `Monks in flux': nocturnal emission and the limits of clerical celibacy in the early Middle Ages. 8. `Angels incarnate': clergy and masculinity from Gregorian Reform to Reformation. 9. Clergy, masculinity and transgression in late medieval England. PART THREE: SEXUALITY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY. 10. Men and sex in tenth-century Italy. 11. Images of effeminate men: the case of Byzantine eunuchs. PART FOUR; WRITTEN RELATIONSHIPS AND SOCIAL REALITY. 12. Love, separation and male friendship: words and actions in Saint Anselm's letters to his friends. 13. `The love of a friend lasts forever': the language of male affection in Old French literature - homosocial or homosexual? 14. `Women and hunting-birds are easy to tame': aristocratic masculinity and the early German love-lyric.
