Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages

When, in their various titles, the authors comprised within this volume speak of 'rhetoric and gender', 'faith and bondage', self-perception, self-revelation, 'beauty and equality', they do more than indicate the particular thrust of their individual studies. They point to a common theme and pre-occupation: a shared and collaborative endeavour to view medieval women - in life, literature, legend, hagiography and art - 'through their own eyes' which was seminal to this volume and this series. For the most part, the women portrayed have speak to us through intermediaries. Hildegard of Bingen, Christine de Pisan, and Ann Hutchinson's 'recusant nuns' may present themselves in their own words - though even here there are veils of concealment, dissimulation, assumption and presumption to be removed - but Chaucer's women, Chretien's patrons, Milton's Eve, the conflation of saints which comprises Wilgefortis, Ste Foy, and the imperious Theodora are presented in the words, works and social milieux of men. Where they are, ostensibly, given their own voices it is by male authors. That the women presented here did in fact have personalities of their own - as plain common-sense might have been expected to allow - and can be argued to display them, however inadvertently, in the male creations which embody them, is evident in this collection, which raises interesting incidental questions about the purposes, for example, of Chaucer, Milton and the mosaicists of Ravenna.