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1 results

  • Introduction

  • Emma O. Bérat
  • Book:
    Women's Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination
    Published online:
    14 March 2024
    Print publication:
    21 March 2024, pp 1-22

  • Summary

    Genealogy, as depicted in medieval texts and images, is an expansive concept that extends beyond the male-oriented model of patrilineage and includes various approaches to matrilineage and women’s legacies. Because genealogy is always constructed, regardless of how much writers insist on its naturalness, literary sources are key to revealing the imaginative ways medieval writers and their patrons conveyed women-oriented narratives. Through an overview of medieval sources and recent scholarship, this chapter opens up the medieval notion of genealogy to show how it both included female characters and drew upon characteristics typical of elite women’s lives. The Introduction presents three features frequently associated with and useful for understanding women’s genealogies: a close relationship between lineage and material textuality, the importance of manuscript context, and mobile notions of time and geography. Analyses of an aristocratic matrilineal diagram and an excerpt of the Anglo-Norman family romance Fouke le Fitz Waryn illustrate these features.