IMC 2018: Sessions
Session 826: 'Diana and all her sect': Remembering Women Warriors, IV
Tuesday 3 July 2018, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship |
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| Organisers: | Sophie Harwood, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds Roberta Magnani, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University Amy Louise Morgan, School of Literature & Languages, University of Surrey |
| Moderator/Chairs: | Roberta Magnani, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University Liz Herbert McAvoy, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University |
| Paper 826-a | The Honest Androgyne: The Queer Virtues of Queen Pantsylla in Lydgate's Troy Book (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Sexuality |
| Paper 826-b | Lagertha and St Theodora of Vasta: Medieval Warrior Women in Folk Tradition and Pop Culture (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Greek, Language and Literature - Scandinavian |
| Paper 826-c | Freoðuwebbe or Friðusibb? That is the Question: Expanding the Role of Women in Beowulf (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Women's Studies |
| Abstract | The trope of the warrior woman, whether literary construct or historical figure, has been harnessed throughout medieval culture as a technology of memory, that is, as a way of recuperating but also policing, female-coded historiographies in which women's agency can be imagined and performed. Hippolyta, the queen of the Amazons, Diana, the goddess of the hunt, the biblical Judith, Zenobia and Semiramis, among many others, function as epistemological paradigms which recast not only roles traditionally assigned to women in political and military conflicts, but also conventional histories of warfare and cultural difference. The liminality of these warrior women, as women occupying a masculine space and often the labile confines between East and West, also translates into a reassessment of the geographical and cultural boundaries between civilisations, in particular between white Christianity as default dominant identity and the constructed alterity of other racial and religious subject position. Remembering and reappropriating women warriors allows therefore the performance of these boundaries, at times to reinforce them and at times to unsettle them. |