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

There are currently four categories: Prix Femina, Prix Femina essai, Prix Femina étranger (foreign novels), and Prix Femina des lycéens.

My only criticism would be that the book is heavily focused on central and western Europe, I think a broader scale would be great. I did find it hard to immerse myself in the book and I'm not sure why. Perhaps because Ramirez jumps between the lives of the women, imagined vignettes and stories around the sources, but others have done this effectively (eg in Kindred, Rebecca Wragg Sykes makes the lives of Neanderthals feel immediate and real). Maybe it's about the quality of writing, and the fact there's always half a knowing eye on the present. At one point, Ramirez leads us into 7th century Loftus with its salt air, Iron Age enclosures and burial mounds but then breaks the spell by describing the enclosure as the size of half a football pitch!This was a truly interesting read from Janina Ramirez. Making me stop to think over the tales of the women almost written out of history, if not for Ramirez, I often found myself reflecting on *how did what they do influence us now* and the answers were sometimes a little more profound than I initially expected.

One of my favourite genres is books centering forgotten female stories and figures, and this is exactly what Ramírez has written in Femina. About half the book focuses on England, which has really been done to death in popular history, but I was curious about a couple of the non-England chapters. One is on the Polish female king, Jadwiga, who was later canonized—sadly this chapter read like a detailed Wikipedia entry; I didn’t get any more out of it than that. As for why Jadwiga was “king” rather than “queen,” this apparently was a question of semantics: her father, king of Poland and Hungary, had no sons and wanted his daughters to inherit in their own right, and this seems to have been a way of getting around rules against women ruling. Both were declared kings while still young girls, but married off to older men on top of the usual control by advisors that any young rulers face. Both also died young.Find sources: "Prix Femina"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( January 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Priapus 20 an impromptu compilation of poetry, illustration & criticism (Autumn 1970) / Roger Iredala, Harry Guest, W G Shepherd, Peter Scupham, Wes Magee, Bernard Stay, Joan Murray Simpson, Andrew Young, Jim W Miller, Thomas Tessier, Peter Cundall, John Cotton, Mark Frobisher Ramirez makes sure to include individuals not only geographically diverse, but also figures who presented themselves and lived in ways that challenged societal and cultural norms regarding gender, sex, and identity. Femina concludes with the story of Eleanor, a fourteenth-century sex worker arrested for acts of sodomy and prostitution. The case originally reported Yorkshireman John Britby participating in ‘the most nefarious and ignominious vice’ with ‘John Rykener, calling [himself] Eleanor, having been detected in woman’s clothing.’ Although it does not appear Eleanor was prosecuted for either crime, their testimony evinces involvement with members of the clergy, monks, and nuns, suggesting that their arrest was about moral corruption by high-status individuals rather than prostitution or sodomy. Throughout the trial, Eleanor shares how they had sex with men and women, using their job as a barmaid, seamstress, and prostitute to acquire clients. As the only surviving legal document from late-medieval England to document same-sex intercourse, Eleanor’s trial discloses how the scribes struggled to find suitable terms to express the sexual and gendered aspects of the case. The marginal and queer existence of Eleanor, whose testimony radically subverts accepted societal norms, reveals that complex humans who transgress and subvert sexual and/or gender expectations have been around for a long time.

The women the author chose to write about are not mostly unknown or left out of history. And they still managed to be a footnote in a book supposedly about them. Fascinating look at the Middle Ages through the stories of women who were significant in their time but whose reputations were later obscured, rewritten or lost. These women fought battles, made political decisions, created works of art, even ruled as King (Jadwiga of Poland) and examining their lives sheds light on sometimes neglected aspects of life in the Medieval Period. Erst einmal war die Einführung sehr seltsam, weil es um eine Suffragette in den 1920er Jahren ging. Es wurde zwar irgendwie eine Parallele zu Frauen im Mittelalter gezogen, die ich aber nicht nachvollziehen konnte und deplatziert gewirkt hat. Hier hätte ich mich über eine klassische Einführung mit Begriffsdefinition und Ziel des Textes gefreut. Writing: From start to finish this almost didn't feel like non-fiction. Ramírez' prose made it feel like I was being spoon-fed with delightful history, loving every single bite. The book consists of a series of essays. An assortment of early, middle and late medieval women are presented. 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. Through her we see an ordinary woman like you and me. The variety of the women we meet is wide. That which is made evident is that the women of the Middle Ages have many similarities with women of our own time. You are in for some surprises!Ramirez gives us a whistle stop tour of highlights about women in the middle ages. Scandinavian women who were warriors or traders. Prominent aristocratic women who wielded power. Inspired women who turned to spirituality to find their voice. Queer and trans women and women of colour (this is a eurocentric book) get a peep in. Julian of Norwich, Hildegarde von Bingen and Margery Kempe deserve their own books and many exist. The evidence on 'Viking' women is covered more thoroughly in RIVER KINGS by Cat Jarman. Generell war leider nicht viel Quellenkritik zu finden; mir schien es so: wenn die Autorin eine Hypothese fand, die in ihr Narrativ passte, wurde sie wie ein Fakt behandelt und basierend darauf weiter gearbeitet. Vor allem im Kapitel über Hildegard von Bingen ist mir das aufgefallen. ed. "The prayers in this book have been contributed by people who have experience of working with children in this age-group". Pp 96, 1 b/w illustration. P/b, slight sunning to spine, illustrated cover. G+. US author wins top French literary prize". France24. 6 November 2013. Archived from the original on 9 November 2013 . Retrieved 8 November 2013.

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