Missing Women: Sex Ratios in England, 1000–1500

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Bardsley
Keyword(s):  
Sex Ratio ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Sex Ratios ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
Missing Women

AbstractThis article proposes that late medieval English men may have outnumbered women by a significant margin, perhaps as high as 110 to 115 men for every 100 women. Data from both documentary and archaeological sources suggest that fewer females survived to adulthood and that those who did may have died younger than their husbands and brothers. Historians of medieval England have said little about the possibility of a skewed sex ratio, yet if women were indeed “missing” from the population as a whole in a significant and sustained way, we must reinterpret much of the social, economic, gender, and cultural history of late medieval England.

Conclusion

Law in Common ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 269-276
Author(s):  
Tom Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
Shared Understanding ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Late Medieval England

The conclusion briefly summarizes the arguments of the book, before going on to consider their implications for how the social and political history of late-medieval England is to be understood as a more cohesive narrative of transformation. Specifically, it suggests that the legal structures—both local legal cultures and common legalities—discussed in the book can be understood as a part of a ‘common constitution’ that emerged in post-plague society, binding people together in a shared understanding of governance, making possible the kinds of expansive claim made by late-medieval government. In this way, the conclusion gestures towards a way of writing political history of the everyday.

Chaucer and Contemporary Courts of Law and Politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-42
Author(s):  
Matthew Giancarlo
Keyword(s):  
Legal Consciousness ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Direct Impact ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Medieval England

Appreciating the significance of courts in Chaucer’s day requires understanding the connections among noble households, courts of law, and the practices of social interaction and play in late medieval culture. This chapter briefly summarizes important aspects of medieval court cultures. It summarizes Chaucer’s biographical history of legal and court connections. It explains the connections between legal courts and the social environments of noble households, and their relation to political events such as the Uprising of 1381. With specific reference to several stories and tales (The Summoner’s Tale, The Friar’s Tale, and the Second Nun’s Tale), this chapter explains how the worlds of aristocratic courtliness and the growing legal consciousness of late medieval England are examined and often criticized by Chaucer’s narratives. Chaucer’s life and work were richly informed by court contexts and understanding them helps the modern reader to better appreciate the direct impact that court cultures had on his literary practice.

The Medieval Literary Beyond Form, ed. Robert J. Meyer-Lee and Catherine Sanok. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. s. Brewer, 2018, xii, 276 pp., 30 b/w ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 337-339
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Middle Ages

We can always use critical studies that question both what constitutes a literary text in the Middle Ages and what form those texts have, as is the case with the essays collected by Robert J. Meyer-Lee and Catherine Sanok. They define form as “a historically contingent set of attributes defining privileged texts as literature so that the latter may serve particular social, economic, and political interests” (4). They hasten, however, and quite correctly, to warn us about the difficulty in being overly specific in light of the contingency of such formal criteria, which might undermine the entire effort here to some extent, even though they then emphasize again that the articles “meditate upon the question of the relation between form and the literary” (6), as it manifested itself in medieval and late medieval England, which is supposed to be the exclusive terrain covered here, thought that is not always true. Taking us back to this deliberate (?) seesaw, they then return to highlight that in the pre-modern world the differences between literary and non-literary were rather fluid (8). What might then be the focus of this book? The sub-heading of the book itself leaves us a bit puzzled: “Beyond Form,” so why does the introduction then highlight formality issues so centrally?

The Indexical Self

Last Words ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Sebastian Sobecki
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Social Character ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Medieval Text ◽  
Late Medieval England

No medieval text was designed to be read hundreds of years later by an audience unfamiliar with its language, situation, and author. By ascribing to these texts intentional anonymity, we romanticize them and misjudge the social character of their authors. Instead, most medieval poems and manuscripts presuppose familiarity with their authorial or scribal maker. Last Words: The Public Self and the Social Author in Late Medieval England attempts to recover this familiarity and understand the literary motivation behind some of the most important fifteenth-century texts and authors. Last Words captures the public selves of such social authors when they attempt to extract themselves from the context of a lived life.

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