Medieval Domesticity Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England

Leading scholars shed new light on what 'home' meant to men and women in medieval England.

What did 'home' mean to men and women in the period 1200–1500? This volume explores the many cultural, material and ideological dimensions of the concept of domesticity. Leading scholars examine not only the material cultures of domesticity, gender, and power relations within the household, but also how they were envisioned in texts, images, objects and architecture. Many of the essays argue that England witnessed the emergence of a distinctive bourgeois ideology of domesticity during the late Middle Ages. But the volume also contends that, although the world of the great lord was far removed from that of the artisan or peasant, these social groups all occupied physical structures that constituted homes in which people were drawn together by ties of kinship, service or neighbourliness. This pioneering study will appeal to scholars of medieval English society, literature and culture.

1. Introduction P. J. P. Goldberg and Maryanne Kowaleski; 2. 'Burgeis' domesticity in late medieval England Felicity Riddy; 3. Buttery and pantry, and their antecedents: idea and architecture in the English medieval house Mark Gardiner; 4. Building domesticity in the city: English urban housing before the Black Death Sarah Rees Jones; 5. Urban and rural houses and households in the late Middle Ages: a case study from Yorkshire Jane Grenville; 6. The fashioning of bourgeois domesticity in later medieval England: a material culture perspective P. J. P. Goldberg; 7. Nuns at home: the domesticity of sacred space Marilyn Oliva; 8. 'Which may be said to be her own': widows and personal property in late medieval England Janet Loengard; 9. Weeping for the virtuous wife: laymen, affective piety, and Chaucer's Clerk's Tale Nicole Nolan Sidhu; 10. On the sadness of not being a bird: late medieval marriage ideologies and the figure of Abraham in William Langland's Piers Plowman Isabel Davis; 11. Household games and women's erotic education Nicola McDonald; 12. Home visits: Mary, Elizabeth, Margery Kempe, and the feast of the Visitation Mary C. Erler.

What did 'home' mean to men and women in the period 1200-1500? This volume explores the concept of domesticity, and addresses its many cultural, material and ideological dimensions. Leading scholars argue that, during this period, England witnessed the emergence of a distinctive bourgeois ideology of domesticity.