276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Femina: The instant Sunday Times bestseller – A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It

£11£22.00Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Additionally, while the subject matter is engaging, the impact is lessened at times by the author’s writing, which can be clunky and not always serve the fascinating narratives within. The book’s thesis is that (some) women in the medieval world had more agency, influence, and power than the traditional historical narrative has led us to believe. The section on the Cathars—the victims of the 13th century Albigensian Crusade in southern France—was a bit better; while again pretty surface-level on the individual women, it compensates for that by including a bunch of them along with addressing the larger issues at play. And whilst I learnt a lot, and have plenty I want to follow up on (not least Jadwiga), the book didn't feel quite as focused as it could be.

Femina examines case studies of women from throughout the early ages by analysing artifacts, providing contextual information and interspersing the text with vivid descriptions to bring the ancient women to life.

Ook is in de loop van de geschiedenis de vrouw naar het achterplan verdwenen, onzichtbaar en ondergeschikt geworden, terwijl enkel de geschiedenis van de machtigen en de heersers werd bewaard. Careful to underline that she is not re-writing history but rather shifting the focus from men to women, Femina’s overarching goal is to use the visible – physical artefacts – to reveal the seemingly invisible – women. Queerness, in its broadest sense of a point of view or set of behaviours running at a slant to received ideas, remains the key to Femina.

My only criticism would be that the book is heavily focused on central and western Europe, I think a broader scale would be great. Jammer genoeg is de vertaling van dit boek ondermaats en hangt het vertelde aaneen van “wellichts” en “waarschijnlijks”. Oxford and BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women’s names struck out of historical records, with the word FEMINA annotated beside them.Out went the wimples and the prayer books, the mute looks and downcast eyes, and in came something altogether fiercer and more interesting.

BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women's names struck out of historical records, with the word 'Femina' annotated beside them. I do think the topic of women written out of history is a big one, and the author, therefore, has to skim it a little as she wants to show a range of cases, but for me this felt a little bit too surface-level and I really didn't get a huge amount from the book in terms of detail. I have tried a different, but similarly loaded, approach in this book, putting the spotlight on women.Dat uitgangspunt over de vrouwen in de geschiedenis en later ook even van andere minderheden, is dus prachtig. Im letzten Kapitel macht sie auch Anstalten in die Richtung, das Thema kommt jedoch viel zu kurz und hat nur Platz als Randbemerkung.

For a non-medievalist audience, Femina is eye-opening and thrilling, a testament to women’s significance throughout history. Nun, musician, visionary, her book was smuggled out of Soviet occupied Germany in 1948, thanks to the bravery of two women. From the back of a crammed cupboard, he pulled out an incomparable treasure, The Book of Margery Kempe, since described as the earliest known English autobiographical text written by a woman or, quite possibly, by anyone at all. She has also written and presented a number of documentaries for BBC4 and Radio Four, and is a regular guest presenter of Front Row. In the Hildegard chapter (probably the best one), the initial section (Discovery) about smuggling her manuscript out of Russian occupied Dresden is muddled and jumps back and forth.The one thing they all have in common however, is that they are bypassed by our conventional histories, overlooked in favour of the stories of their male contemporaries. Examples are a female Viking warrior, the embroiderers who created the Bayeux Tapestry, the female monarchial King Jadwiga of Poland, the musician and composer Hildegard of Bingen and a woman who travelled and saw to it that her own life history was written. I wish there was more specific focus on them and more detail to be uncovered and shared in this book. I suppose that is where the book didn't work for me - its so keen to prove the point that there were exceptional women succeeding beyond the strictures of their time that it seems to ignore most women, who were an important part of history just by living and contributing albeit though perhaps making no mark officially.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment