IMC 2008: Sessions
Session 501: Women in Power, Women Without: The Wives, Widows, and Sisters of Kings and Dukes in the Anglo-Norman World, II
Tuesday 8 July 2008, 09.00-10.30
Sponsor: | Haskins Society for Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Angevin & Viking History |
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Organiser: | Charlotte Cartwright, School of History, University of Liverpool / State University of New York, Oswego |
Moderator/Chair: | Catherine A. M. Clarke, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO) / Department of English, Swansea University |
Paper 501-a | Daughter, Wife, Wife, Widow: The Four Lives of Edward the Confessor's Sister Countess Goda (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Politics and Diplomacy, Social History |
Paper 501-b | The Girl Who Should Have Been Queen: Alys Capet and the Angevin Kings (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Politics and Diplomacy, Social History |
Paper 501-c | Anglo-Norman Queenship and its European Context (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Politics and Diplomacy, Social History |
Abstract | While much work has been done on prominent and powerful high-status women in the medieval period, less attention has been paid to those who were pawns in the games of diplomatic marriage, who were excluded from power by their husbands or circumstances, or who chose not to seek power or to operate the power at their disposal. These two linked sessions contrast powerful and powerless women in the Anglo-Norman and Angevin worlds. Five of the papers use case studies of individual royal and ducal women, mostly ones who have been relatively neglected in the scholarship and whose lives display different positions in relation to their menfolk: as wives, sisters, mothers, fiancées and widows. The sixth provides an overview of and reflection on the wider topic of why some women exercised power and others did not. |