Masculinity in Medieval Europe

by Dawn M. Hadley (Editor)

This important book launches the medieval tier of Longman's new gender history series, Women and Men in History. The volume, which is aimed at students, scholars and general readers alike, examines masculinity across medieval Europe (including the Byzantine Empire, Italy, France, Germany, and England) between the fourth and sixteenth centuries. Scholarly, and yet always accessible, the book is a much-needed contribution to the study of gender in the Middle Ages. The aim of the book is to problematise medieval masculimity showing how it was far from being a fixed identity against which female status and identity can be constructed.

'Death makes the man'? burial rite and the construction of masculinities in the early middle ages / D.M. Hadley and J.M. Moore --
Frustrated masculinity: the relationship between William the Conqueror and his eldest son / W.M. Aird --
Masters and men in later medieval England / P.J.P Goldberg --
Military masculinity in England and northern France c.1050-c.1225 / M. Bennett --
Images of effeminate men: the case of Byzantine Eunuchs / S. Tougher --
Masculinity in flux: nocturnal emission and the limits of celibacy in the early middle ages / C. Leyser --
Monks, secular men and masculinity, c.900 / J.L. Nelson --
Men and sex in tenth-century Italy / R. Balzaretti --
Angels incarnate: clergy and masculinity from Gregorian reform to reformation / R.N. Swanson --
Clergy, masculinity and transgression in late medieval England / P.H. Cullum --
Women and hunting-birds are easy to tame: aristocratic masculinity and the early German love-lyric / M. Chinca --
The medieval male couple and the language of homosociality / M.J. Ailes --
Love, separation and male friendship: words and actions in Saint Anselm's letters to his friends / J.P Haseldine

Genres: History, Medieval

285 pages, Textbook Binding

First published December 1, 1998

About the author

Writes as D.M. Hadley and Dawn M. Hadley.

Dawn Marie Hadley (born 1967) is a British historian and archaeologist, who is best known for her research on the Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age periods, the study of childhood, and gender in medieval England. She is a member of the Centre for Medieval Studies and the department of archaeology at the University of York and co-director of the Tents to Towns project.