Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West

329 Pages·1999·6.51 MB·English

by  Jacqueline Murray

CONFLICTED IDENTITIES AND
MULTIPLE MASCULINITIES
M EN IN THE MEDIEVAL WEST
GARLAND MEDIEVAL CASEBOOKS
VOLUME 25
GARLAND REFERENCE LIBRARY OF THE HUMANITIES
VOLUME 2078
GARLAND MEDIEVAL CASEBOOKS
CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ AND MARCIA COLISH, Series Editors
SEX IN THE MIDDLE AGES SANCTITY AND MOTHERHOOD
A Book of Essays Essays on Holy Mothers
edited by Joyce E. Salisbury in the Middle Ages
edited by Annecke B. Mulder-Bakker
MARGERY KEMPE
A Book of Essays MEDIEVAL FAMILY ROLES
edited by Sandra J. McEntire A Book of Essays
edited by Cathy Jorgensen Itnyre
THE MEDIEVAL WORLD OF NATURE
A Book of Essays THE MABINOGI
edited by Joyce E. Salisbury A Book of Essays
edited by C.W Sullivan III
THE CHESTER MYSTERY CYCLE
A Casebook THE PILGRIMAGE TO COMPOSTELA
edited by Kevin J. Harty IN THE MIDDLE AGES
A Book of Essays
MEDIEVAL NUMEROLOGY edited by Maryjane Dunn and
A Book of Essays
Linda Kay Davidson
edited by Robert L. Surles
MEDIEVAL LITURGY
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES OF A Book of Essays
MEDIEVAL MEDICINE edited by Lizette Larson-Miller
A Book of Essays
edited by Margaret R. Schleissner MEDIEVAL PURITY AND PIETY
Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy
SAINT AUGUSTINE THE BISHOP and Religious Reform
A Book of Essays
edited by Michael Frassetto
edited by Fannie LeMoine and
Christopher Kleinhenz HlLDEGARD OF BlNGEN
A Book of Essays
MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN edited by Maud Burnett Mclnerney
PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAM
A Book of Essays JULIAN OF NORWICH
edited by John Victor Tolan A Book of Essays
edited by Sandra J. McEntire
SOVEREIGN LADY
Essays on Women THE MARK OF THE BEAST
in Middle English Literature The Medieval Bestiary
Edited by Muriel Whitaker in Art, Life, and Literature
edited by Debra Hassig
FOOD IN THE MIDDLE AGES
A Book of Essays CONFLICTED IDENTITIES AND
edited by Melitta Weiss Adamson MULTIPLE MASCULINITIES
Men in the Medieval West
ANIMALS IN THE MIDDLE AGES edited by Jacqueline Murray
A Book of Essays
edited by Nona C. Flores
CONFLICTED IDENTITIES AND
MULTIPLE MASCULINITIES
M EN IN THE MEDIEVAL WEST
EDITED BY
JACQUELINE MURRAY
First published by Garland Publishing, Inc.
This edition published 2011 by Routledge:
Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
711 Third Avenue 2 Park Square, Milton Park
New York, NY 10017 Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
Published in 1999 by
Garland Publishing Inc.
A Member of the Taylor & Francis Group
19 Union Square West
New York, NY 10003
Copyright © 1999 by Jacqueline Murray
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Jacqueline Murray
An Unresolved Syllogism: The Search for a
Christian Gender System 1
Jo Ann McNamara
Secular and Spiritual Fatherhood in the Eleventh Century 25
Megan McLaughlin
Jean Gerson and Traumas of Masculine Affectivity and Sexuality 45
Brian Patrick McGuire
Mystical Castration: Some Reflections on Peter Abelard,
Hugh of Lincoln and Sexual Control 73
Jacqueline Murray
Medieval Masculinities and Modern Interpretations:
The Problem of the Pardoner 93
Vern L. Bullough with Gwen Whitehead Brewer
V
vi Contents
Triangularity in the Pagan North: The Case of
Bjorn Arngeirsson and póròr Kolbeinsson 111
Jenny Jochens
Steel Corpse: Imaging the Knight in Death 135
Rachel Dressier
Chivalric Conversation and the Denial of Male Fear 169
Andrew Taylor
Separating the Men from the Goats: Masculinity, Civilization
and Identity Formation in the Medieval University 189
Ruth Mazo Karras
Gravitas and Consumption 215
Susan Mosher Stuard
Men and Masculinity in Late Medieval London
Civic Culture: Governance, Patriarchy and Reputation 243
Shannon McSheffrey
"Loved Him—Hated Her": Honor and Shame
at the Medieval Court 279
John Carmi Parsons
Contributors 299
Index 303
Acknowledgments
There is perhaps no more collaborative form of scholarship than a collec
tion of essays. The process of blending the individual insights of many
scholars into a work of coherence is at once its own challenge and its
own reward. I have been particularly fortunate to have had the most
learned and cooperative of colleagues to work with in the preparation of
this volume. I must thank them all for making this editorial experience a
pleasure.
A number of people helped with the preparation of this volume at
various stages. In particular, I would like to thank Joyce Salisbury for her
inspiration, Leslie Howsam for her unfailing generousity, Laura Gardner
for her technical expertise, Marion Corkett for her sharp eye and, espe
cially, Susan Riggs for her patience and wisdom. Sheila Campbell came
to the rescue when the world of computers took on a peculiarly
Kafkaesque quality. To her we are all indebted.
Jacqueline Murray
vii

Introduction
JACQUELINE MURRAY
The past decade has witnessed a remarkable proliferation of studies, both
scholarly and popular, of men and masculinities. Indeed, for a research
area that could have been dismissed as little more than a regressive and
reactionary response to women's studies and feminist studies, the study
of men is proving to be remarkably rich and resilient. It is a research area
that is emerging from the excesses of the angst-ridden, drum-beating
male equivalent of early seventies feminist-consciousness-raising groups
to generate some important insights into the nature of masculinity and
femininity, of men and women, in societies past and present. Yet, for all
this intellectual respectability, the study of medieval men, in their histor
ical and cultural subjectivity, remains unusual, even innovative and,
occasionally, controversial and contested.
In 1987 Harry Brod made a plea for what he called men's studies.1
Brod addressed head-on the feminist objections that men were already
the subject of virtually all research, by insisting that what was needed
were qualitatively different kinds of studies about men, studies firmly
rooted in earlier feminist scholarship, informed by the kind of critical
perspectives that had done so much to shape women's studies. Despite
the earnest eloquence of Brod's apologia, resistence to the new men's
studies continues. Seven years later, in the Preface to the first essay col
lection devoted exclusively to masculinity in the Middle Ages (tellingly
entitled, "Why Men?"), Thelma Fenster retraced much of the same
ground, making many of the same arguments as had Brod, but for an
audience of medievalists.2 Fenster identified the scholarly approaches
that render women invisible as the very same ones that obscure and hide
ix