Authority Gender and Space in the Anglo-Norman World 900-1200

<b>SHORTLISTED for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain's Hitchcock Medallion. </b><br><br><b>A ground-breaking interdisciplinary approach to the medieval manor pre- and post-Conquest.</b><br><br>Medieval manors have long been the subject of academic study though the ways in which these houses reflected and shaped - and were shaped by - their occupants to express social authority have not yet been fully explored. This book undertakes a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination of them aiming to provide a fuller account of how concepts of space and domestic place were understood represented and used by their occupants in England and Normandy from c. 900 to c. 1200 and how this illuminates aspects of gender and authority in the period. Blending approaches from archaeology and history it uses evidence from Anglo-Saxon wills standing and excavated manorial sites in England and Normandy and a variety of written texts from <i>vitae</i> to history to poetry in order to delve into deconstruct and reconstruct gendered notions of authority in the period. This book ultimately challenges ideas of gendered objects and places through the medieval construction of authoritative personae and the use and representation of medieval manors focusing on the household as a place and space of performance in the age of the Norman Conquest.