24 February 2007 – ‘Representing Women’

February 24

Caroline Barron (Dept. of History, RHUL)
Representations of St Zita/Sitha in Medieval England

Zita was a servant in the Faitinelli household in Lucca. She died in 1278 but was not officially canonised until the seventeenth century. Within twenty years of her death there was an altar dedicated to her at Bury St Edmunds, and her cult spread rapidly in England, and also reached Ireland and Iceland. There are over 100 representations of her to be found in stained glass, alabaster, tomb sculptures, Books of Hours, embroideries and on altar screens. The aim of this paper will be to look at the different ways in which a humble servant girl was represented, and to examine why her cult may have had such a wide appeal to men and women at all social levels.  

Elisabeth Van Houts (Emmanuel College, Cambridge)
The role of aristocratic women in the cultural relations between Germany and the kingdom of Poland (11th c.)

The paper will analyse the written and material evidence for the relations between Germany and Poland in the eleventh century. Several chronicles, books and letters have survived (some in Krakow cathedral) which testify to the important role played by German aristocratic women in the establishment of intellectual life at the Piast court of Mieszko II (1025-34) and Wladyslaw Herman (1080-1102).  

Christina Lee (Viking Studies, University of Nottingham)
Fabricated Identities: Textiles as markers of ethnicity?

The recent debate around the wearing of the niquab is a reminder of the connection between clothes and cultural and/or religious identity.  In this paper I want to examine whether similar observations may be made in Viking-age Britain. There are relatively few objects that may be identified having an ‘ethnic’ dress connotation, such as oval brooches, so far been found in England (in contrast to over 4,000 paired oval brooches found in Scandinavia), and yet a tenth-century cleric is berating a ‘fellow Englishman’ for the wearing of ‘Danish fashion’. This poses the question: what is Danish fashion? And could this be distinguished from Hiberno-Norse fashions from around the Irish Sea region?

Of course, much of the evidence has subsequently decayed, but one way to get around the problem is to look more closely at the fabric from which such clothing was made and which is preserved as metal-replaced or mineralised scraps from a number of objects in graves. Textile work in the first millennium is generally women’s work and may be part of a local economy. It has been claimed that there are identifiable differences between weave type, spinning and also the use of wool in different communities and the paper will examine whether there are correlations between different forms of manufacture and the groups they are supposed to represent. I want to look specifically at remains from around the Irish Sea region, and compare it to ‘Viking-style’ textiles found in the home lands in order to ask whether these communities used textile as a marker of their identity.  

Diane Watt (Department of English, University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
Lesbian (In)visibility in Anglo-Saxon Saints' Lives

Lesbian invisibililty in medieval literary and historical studies is particularly striking in Old English criticism, for a variety of reasons, including resistance within the discipline to radical theoretical approaches. In this paper I provide a brief discussion of the theoretical issues and critical debates surrounding issues of lesbian 'representation' before going on to offer a reading of two Old English saints' lives from a lesbian perspective, drawing on insights from contemporary lesbian film theory, and focusing on the so-called 'transvestite' saints Euphrosyne and Eugenia.  

Alcuin Blamires (Dept. of English & Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths' University of London)
"Sisterhood", the Poor Relation of "Brotherhood" in Medieval Writings? Ipomadon as Case-Study

This investigation concerns non-familial ‘sisterhood’ and ‘brotherhood’. Medieval writing and (to judge from some observations by Derrida) much post-medieval writing cultivates affective male-male bonding far more than affective female-female bonding. There appear to be certain exceptions in medieval romance -- especially conspiratorial alliances between heroine and nurse or heroine and maidservant – but do they really encompass a concept of ‘sisterhood’ as a model of friendship? Analysis suggests that Ipomadon (a somewhat subversive romance narrative in several ways) is a rare example of an attempt to emphasize and test a substantial friendship between women.  

Patricia Harris Gillies (Dept. of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex)
Intercultural Connections: Matilda of Saxony and Bertran de Born

In late 1182 Henry II’s daughter Matilda, her husband Henry, Duke of Saxony and her family were staying in Argentan as exiles from the Holy Roman Empire. The interaction of Occitan with Latin, Anglo-Norman and English culture defined the terms of the troubadour and nobleman Bertran de Born’s attendance on Henry II’s daughter Matilda at Argentan.  By considering the intercultural viewpoints that shift through the poems of Bertran de Born, perhaps we can glimpse deeper into the complex realities of late twelfth century women in the courts of empire. [texts and translations from the Paden, Sankovitch, Stablein-Gillies ed. trans, The Poems of Bertran de Born. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: U of California press, 1986.]  

Rowena E Archer (Brasenose College and Christchurch, Oxford)
Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk (d.1475) and her Books

Alice Chaucer, the granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer was the only surviving child and heiress of Thomas Chaucer.  Though born a commoner she rose by marriage to become a duchess and she is buried in a fine late medieval chest tomb at Ewelme in Oxfordshire, the Chaucer family property.  Among the Ewelme papers is a list of her belongings including her books which she had moved from Suffolk to Oxfordshire in 1466.  The paper will consider both her general patronage of, and connections with, the literary and educational world of the fifteenth century as well as her own personal library.