ABSTRACT
This collection brings together two flourishing areas of medieval scholarship: gender and religion. It examines gender-specific religious practices and contends that the pursuit of holiness can destabilise binary gender itself. Though saints may be classified as masculine or feminine, holiness may also cut across gender divisions and demand a break from normally gendered behaviour. This work of interdisciplinary cultural history includes contributions from historians, art historians and literary critics and will be of interest not only to medievalists, but also to students of religion and gender in any period.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |8 pages
Introduction Gender and holiness
Performance and representation in the later Middle Ages
chapter 7|20 pages
Female piety and impiety
Selected images of women in wall paintings in England after 1300
chapter 8|14 pages
Staging conversion: the Digby saint plays and The Book of Margery Kempe
The Digby saint plays and