Masculinity in Medieval Europe

<p>An original and highly accessible collection of essays which is based on a huge range of historical sources to reveal the realities of mens' lives in the Middle Ages. It covers an impressive geographical range - including essays on Italy, France, Germany and Byzantium - and will span the entire medieval period, from the fourth to the fifteenth century. The collection is divided into four main sections: attaining masculinity; lay men and churchmen: sources of tension; sexuality and the construction of masculinity; and written relationships and social reality.<br><br><br>The contributors are:<br>Dawn Hadley, Jenny Moore, William M. Aird, Jeremy Goldberg, Matthew Bennet, Janet Nelson, Conrad Leyser, Robert Swanson, Patricia Cullum, Ross Balzaretti, Shaun Tougher, Julian Haseldine, Marianne Ailes and Mark Chinca.</p> <p>Introduction. 1. Medieval Masculinities? <strong>PART ONE: ATTAINING MASCULINITY. </strong>2. `Death maketh the man': The construction of masculinity in the early Middle Ages. 3. Frustrated masculinity: The relationship between William the Conqueror and his eldest son. 4. Masters and men in later medieval England. 5. The masculine military ethos c. 1050-1250. <strong>PART TWO: LAY MEN AND CHURCH MEN: SOURCES OF TENSION. </strong>6. Monks, secular men and masculinity c. 900. 7. `Monks in flux': nocturnal emission and the limits of clerical celibacy in the early Middle Ages. 8. `Angels incarnate': clergy and masculinity from Gregorian Reform to Reformation. 9. Clergy, masculinity and transgression in late medieval England. <strong>PART THREE: SEXUALITY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY. </strong>10. Men and sex in tenth-century Italy. 11. Images of effeminate men: the case of Byzantine eunuchs. <strong>PART FOUR; WRITTEN RELATIONSHIPS AND SOCIAL REALITY. </strong>12. Love, separation and male friendship: words and actions in Saint Anselm's letters to his friends. 13. `The love of a friend lasts forever': the language of male affection in Old French literature - homosocial or homosexual? 14. `Women and hunting-birds are easy to tame': aristocratic masculinity and the early German love-lyric.</p>