This edited collection examines the ways in which medieval grief is both troubled and troubling––troubled in its representation, troubling to categories such as gender, identity, hierarchy, theology, and history, among others. Investigating various instantiations of grief—sorrow, sadness, and mourning; weeping and lamentation; spiritual and theological disorientation and confusion; keening and the drinking of blood; and grief-madness—through a number of theoretical lenses, including feminist, gender, and queer theories, as well as philosophical, sociological, and historical approaches to emotion, the collected essays move beyond simply describing how men and women grieve in the Middle Ages and begin interrogating the ways grief intersects with and shapes gender identity.
Contributors are Kim Bergqvist, Jim Casey, Danielle Marie Cudmore, Marjorie Housley, Erin. I. Mann, Inna Matyushina, Drew Maxwell, Kristen Mills, Jeffery G. Stoyanoff, Lee Templeton, and Kisha G. Tracy.
Lee Templeton (Ph.D., 2006) is Associate Professor of English at North Carolina Wesleyan College. His work has appeared in Medieval Perspectives and The Ballad of the Lone Medievalist, and he is the co-editor of New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature: Essays in Honor of Denise N. Baker.
"The eleven essays collected in Grief, Gender, and Identity in the Middle Ages offer new insights into the history of emotions in medieval lyric, drama, romance, hagiography, and historiography [...] the essays in the volume make a coherent whole, a credit to both contributors and editor [...] Taken as a whole, the collection offers a valuable account of the intersection of gender and the practices and representations of grief on the northern and western edges of medieval Latin Europe [...] It is a worthy and necessary addition to the scholarly literature on grief and gender." Spencer Strub, in The Medieval Review, 22.05.15. See the full review here.
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Grief, Gender, Identity Lee Templeton
1 “Era Omne De Grant Coraçón
Gendered Grief, Sorrow, and Zeal in Medieval Castilian History Writing
Kim Bergqvist
2 Maternal Lament and Misremembering in Dispute between Mary and the Cross Kisha G. Tracy
3 Forbidding Feminine Grief: Affective Exploitation in the Brome Sacrifice of Isaac Jeffery G. Stoyanoff
4 Permanent Grief: Time and the Production of Sainthood in the Old English Life of Euphrosyne Erin I. Mann
5 Grief, Gender, and the Birth of Lyric in Old Norse Poetry Inna Matyushina
6 Gender and Death from Grief in Medieval Scandinavian Texts Kristen Mills
7 “The Noble Way You Blushed”
Queering Mourning Verse in the Ulster Cycle
Marjorie Housley
8 “… agus ag ól a ḟola”
Ingesting Blood and Engendering Lament in Medieval Irish Literature
Danielle Marie Cudmore
9 “Sorow wil meng a mans blode and make him for-to wax wode”
Representations of Male and Female Grief-Madness in Middle English Arthurian Romance
Drew Maxwell
10 Transformative Tears: Grief and Masculine Identity in Sir Orfeo Lee Templeton
11 Feeling it Like a Man: Masculine Grief in Medieval and Early Modern Texts Jim Casey
Bibliography Index of Subjects
Advanced undergraduates, graduate students, scholars, and anyone interested in medieval literature, history, and drama, as well as gender studies and the history of emotions.