Description
Book SynopsisGarver offers a fresh appraisal of the cultural and social history of eighth- and ninth-century women, examining changes in women's lives and in the ways others perceived women during the early Middle Ages.
Trade ReviewWomen and Aristocratic Culture makes a major contribution to our understanding of early medieval and aristocratic experience. Garver is consistently able to take even unsurprising findings and well-known points and parlay them into strong planks of support for her overall thesis.
-- Felica Lifshitz * Medieval Prosopography *
English-speaking scholars have contributed considerably to research on Carolingian women since Suzanne Fonay Wemple's pioneering Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister 500–900, but they have produced few monographs. Valerie Garver's new book is a welcome exception, aiming to show women as 'active participants in shaping and perpetuating the behaviors, beliefs, and practices’ of Carolingian culture.
* Early Medieval Europe *
"Garver provides an excellent synthesis of current scholarship about aristocratic Carolingian women. Although she acknowledges the paucity of sources directly addressing women's rolesshe does a commendable job of examining the existing literature and delineating the place of women in Carolingian society. This creates a useful contribution to both women’s history and social history in the Carolingian period." —Margaret J. McCarthy
* Medium Aevum *
Garver's mastery of a variety of early medieval sources allows her to draw novel conclusions about the roles of aristocratic women as active participants in and shapers of Carolingian elite culture.... Women and Aristocratic Culture reveals a great deal.
-- Courtney L. Luckhardt * H-France Review *
Severe source constraints confront all historians of ninth-century women. The Carolingian world is relatively rich in sources but not in material overtly concerned with women. Yet Garver has read widely. For Garver, the Carolingian reforming revaluation of the aristocratic female household role was a turning point in Western views of women. That is one of many challenges to historians of earlier and later periods left by this brave book, which opens new and interesting perspectives.
* American Historical Review *
