Medieval Women's Lit

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Do these situations sound like the Middle Ages you know? A medieval girl is raised as a boy. A lady saves a knight instead of the other way round. A mother curses unsympathetic men to suffer labor pains when they are needed in battle. A medieval woman constructs a universal history entirely about women to show that misogynists lie. The roots of our modern gender expectations and debates in the West come mainly from medieval society, but you may not have realized how old some of these contentions are, and that women were actively involved in them. This course looks at the writings of medieval women and writings about them, considering the variety of cultures and cultural influences over the thousand years of the European Middle Ages. Literatures from Ireland, Wales, England, France, Germany, and Scandinavia are contextualized against and within cultural expectations of women under such influences as gender roles, religion, national identities, self identity, and mythology. Outside material on historical backgrounds and literary criticism from multiple perspectives supplement the literature read.