Gender and the 'Natural' Environment in the Middle Ages

Theresa Tyers is Research Fellow at the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research, at Swansea University.Patricia Skinner was Professor in History at Swansea University.

In the wake of numerous new studies engaged with the concept of nature, this volume offers a range of fascinating papers that examine how individual medieval writers or artists viewed themselves within their material environment. A typically medieval mindset among mystics promoted an allegorical concept of nature, and we read about medieval womens unique approaches to their natural and social environment. Their struggle, for instance, against mens tendency to relegate them into a gendered space presents a study of œnature leading to new insights into womens individuality, independence and female identity.

• Foreword Laura Kalas1. Introduction: Considering Nature Patricia Skinner and Theresa L. TyersWOMEN’S SPACES2. Intersections of [Un]Nature, Power, and [Dis]Order: The Presentation of Elite Women in Medieval Chronicles Linda E. Mitchell3. Gendering Treatment: Cupping by Female Practitioners in Late Medieval Visual Culture Jennifer Borland4. Fracturing Boundaries: Domesticity and Agriculture Practices in a LateFourteenthCentury Manuscript Theresa L. Tyers5. Distilling Nature: Raw Materials, ‘Artificial’ Remedies and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages Elma BrennerQUEER BODIES6. Recreating the ‘Natural World’: The Medieval Oyster and her Pearl Diane Heath7. Amazed and Ravished in the Medieval Garden: The Space of Lesbian Desire in The Assembly of Ladies and The Floure and the Leafe Michelle M. Sauer8. Monstrous Hybrids, Maternal Sin, and the Concept of Species in Nicole Oresme’s De causis mirabilium Tess WingardBIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED