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 vitae 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.
Author(s): Katherine Weikert
Series: Gender in the Middle Ages, 14
Publisher: The Boydell Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 232
City: Woodbridge
List of Illustrations viii
List of Abbreviations xii
Introduction: Whys and Wherefores 1
Chapter One: Acting with Objects 17
Playing by numbers 19
Women’s tapestries, men’s horns? 34
Chapter Two: Experiencing Spaces I – People and Privacy 47
Methods and how to read access analyses 49
Meditations on medieval ‘privacy’ 53
How elite is elite? 57
Chapter Three: Experiencing Spaces II – Buildings and Spaces 65
Authority as display: early tenth through the mid-eleventh centuries 67
Shifting systems: late tenth through the mid-twelfth centuries 95
Withdrawing places: mid-eleventh through the late twelfth centuries 109
Displaying authority and gender? 141
Chapter Four: Writing Places 148
‘never have I entrusted the Danes’ hall to anyone but you’ 149
Baudri’s interior design disaster 164
Scandalous Eadwig, salacious Ælfgifu and steely Dunstan 169
Changing spaces 178
Conclusions: The Curated Space 183
Appendix: St Michael’s Church, Netherton, Hampshire 191
Bibliography 193
Index 209
Acknowledgements 215
