The Role of Noblewomen in Literary Production in Northern France during the 13th-Century

FAIN: FB-57227-13

Kathy M. Krause
University of Missouri, Kansas City (Kansas City, MO 64110-2235)

My project involves an interdisciplinary study on the intersection of female lordship and literary production in northern France in the thirteenth century. Focusing on Ponthieu and Boulogne, it combines literary analysis, codicology and historical research, re-situating the texts and documents associated with female lordship within the lineage-centered politics of the central Middle Ages. A key component of the study, one tying together the literary and the historical, will be the emphasis on the manuscript context of both literary and historical texts. An in-depth examination of one important region during a key period, this study will help fill important lacunae in our understanding of both medieval literary culture and medieval noblewomen's contributions to literary production. More broadly, it will contribute to the academy's on-going reassessment of female lordship in medieval society.

Associated Products

Via femina: Female patronage of vernacular religious texts in 13th c. Picardy (Book Section)
Title: Via femina: Female patronage of vernacular religious texts in 13th c. Picardy
Author: Kathy M Krause
Editor: Anne-Marie Legaré
Editor: Cynthia J. Brown
Abstract: This article examines two thirteenth-century vernacular religious texts dedicated to two neighboring Ponthevin ruling countesses: the paraphrase of the Pater Noster dedicated to Ide de Boulogne and the allegory of the redemption known as the Quatre Sereurs written for the countess of Ponthieu. The two texts share not only the fact of female patronage, and geography, they also share family connection (two brothers married the two counties’ heiresses) and a manuscript context, for they both occur in the related compilations BNF fr. 12467 and Arsenal 3142 (as well as in other manuscripts). In addition, both manuscripts, and in particular Arsenal 3142, have close associations with another female literary patron, Marie de Brabant. This article examines these two texts in their historical and manuscript contexts, looking at the evidence for and results of female patronage in both texts and manuscripts.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://www.brepolsonline.net/action/showBook?doi=10.1484%2FM.TCC-EB.5.107655
Primary URL Description: Publishers website
Secondary URL: http://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/10.1484/M.TCC-EB.5.107662
Secondary URL Description: Direct link to my article (however it in fact links to the first page of the section, which is blank.
Publisher: Brepols
Book Title: Les femmes, la culture et les arts entre Moyen âge et Renaissance / Women, Art and Culture in Medieval and Early Renaissance Europe
ISBN: 9782503546261

The Charters of the Thirteenth-Century Inheriting Countesses of Ponthieu (Article)
Title: The Charters of the Thirteenth-Century Inheriting Countesses of Ponthieu
Author: Kathy M Krause
Abstract: A detailed examination of the charters and other acta of the inheriting countesses of Ponthieu, looking in particular at the authority they wielded as inheriting countesses as evidenced in the preambles of the acts.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-haskins-society-journal-25-hb.html
Primary URL Description: Publisher's website.
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Haskins Society Journal
Publisher: Haskins Society (Boydell & Brewer)

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