Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages

To be a virgin or a widow never promised a stable, uniform status to a woman during the Middle Ages. Rather, these positions were areas open to debate, constructions that did and still do create and question notions of gender roles, areas of power, and areas of disability. Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages addresses many facets of these two female positions in medieval literature: gender constructions; the body and what it means to make it visible, whether in admiration, torture, or martyrdom; issues of physicality and abjection; creations of literary voice for women who write or create situations for them to be written about. A distinguished group of female scholars examine the meanings behind widowhood and virginity both individually and in relation to each other. The focus on both positions in the same volume makes Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages an unprecedented work.

Appealing to Ecclesiastical Chivalry: The Widowed Queen in the Encomium Emmae ; R.S.Hollis A Widow's Chaste Vow: Mapping the Influence of Marie's La Vie de Sainte Audre?n Isabella, Countess of Suffolk; V.Blanton-Whetsell Closed Doors: An Epithalamium for Queen Edith, Widow and Virgin; M.Otter Performing Virginity: Sex and Violence in the Katherine Group; S.Salih The Paradox of Virginity with the Anchoritic Tradition: The Masculine Gaze and the Feminine Body in the Wohunge Group; S.M.Chewning Unrepresentable Rape and the Represented Church in Medieval Saints' Lives; K.C.Kelly Widowed Virgins, Viragos, and Authority in the Man of Law's Tale; C.C.Baswell The Violent Violation of Virginia: Family Violence in the Physician's Tale; S.P.Prior Between the Living and the Dead: Widows as Heroines of Medieval Romance; R.Hayward The Disorder of Violence/The Violence of Order: Abjection in the Prioress' Tale; K.M.Hobbs A Fountain Sealed, a Garden Enclosed: Literary Constructions of the Virgin Mary in Medieval French Story, Drama, and Lyric; J.M.Davis Virginity at Court: The Trials of the Virgin in the N-Town Cycle; C.L.Carlson Helpful Widows, Virgins in Distress: Women's Friendship in French Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries; A.Roberts The Widow as Virgin: Desexualized Narrative in the Livre de la Cit?es Dames; A.J. Weisl Transgressive Tears: The Pedagogy of Grief and the Image of the Grieving Widow in Medieval French Culture; L.A.Callahan

CINDY L. CARLSON is Assistant Professor of English at Metropolitan State College of Denver.

ANGELA JANE WEISL is Assistant Professor of English at Seton Hall University.