Maybe it's about the quality of writing, and the fact there's always half a knowing eye on the present. It is not simply that she is extraordinary,” Ramirez concludes, “but the world she grew up in was more hospitable to extraordinary women than we might think. Overall, I did like it, and I did hear about some new-to-me ladies from history, but the context of the women wasn't always the focus, and what I really learned is how much has been suppressed or changed or just not uncovered as yet. Durch eine Neuinterpretation der bekannten Quellen, durch archäologische Weiterentwicklung und neue technische Möglichkeiten kommen in den letzten Jahren immer mehr mittelalterliche Frauenschicksale ans Licht, viele davon versammelt die Autorin in ihrem über 500 Seiten starken Buch. I found every chapter interesting and thought provoking, and liked the way Ramírez used her topics to debunk myths about the Middle Ages and demonstrate how there are more similarities with our modern world than we may like to think.

The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings; a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. Signed by Author(s) Warmly inscribed by Michael Reeves to Joan Murray, "Joan with regards Michael" 0. Also, after introducing her eminent women in the early chapters, Ramirez can appear to go off on a tangent due to the lack of records, but skilfully brings the narrative back to her chosen exemplar of a worthy woman in the period, providing relevant context for their significance. Out went the wimples and the prayer books, the mute looks and downcast eyes, and in came something altogether fiercer and more interesting. In Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It , Janina Ramirez reappraises the status of women in the Middle Ages by presenting the lives of several notable women who have been omitted from or underrepresented in histories of the period.Sommige hoofdstukken boeiden me ook meer dan anderen, bvb dat over het tapijt van Bayeux of Hildegard von Bingen.

Focus is instead turned to an early medieval princess, known as the ‘Loftus Princess’, buried with an extraordinary cloisonné necklace; a Swedish woman buried with an axe, quiver of arrows, spears, and sword known as the ‘Birka Warrior’; the anonymous nuns who painstakingly stitched the Bayeux Tapestry; and rebellious (potentially heretical) Cathar spies. And it also highlights our collective responsibility to negotiate how we want the future generation to view our timeline in the course of history.Gripping, incisive, brilliant, Janina Ramirez opens a door into hidden worlds, the secrets of women's lives. Too impatient to abide by the slow tempo of social constellations like suffragists, union leaders, and district judges - she fought alone and at a dashing gallop. Books like this are vital to start to set the record straight, but there is a question around how that plays to someone who is already on board with the project (and is critical of Great Anyone Theory). Oxford and BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women's names struck out of historical records, with the word FEMINA annotated beside them. By following a poor woman for a year, the reader gains insights into broader issues including natural disasters and plague.

I like the premise and the main idea about reframing history back into the context of the past instead of through our own lenses still stood out. Jedoch ist die einzige Gemeinsamkeit das in irgendeiner Form Frauen beteiligt waren, und das war's auch schon. One is on the Polish female king, Jadwiga, who was later canonized—sadly this chapter read like a detailed Wikipedia entry; I didn’t get any more out of it than that.

those social and alternative histories (including women’s history) that had been pushed to the sidelines are breathing new life into how we engage with the past. Ramirez’s essay style of an introduction to each chapter’s subject by reference to a relatively contemporary event (for example the 1997 canonisation of the fourteenth century Jadwiga, “King” of the Poles in chapter 7), followed by an imaginative verbal recreation of an event in the individual’s life and then an exploration of their wider historical significance is a good approach. See also our listing for Photography in America (Whitney Museum of American Art), and for Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer, as well as for U.

Breakthroughs in archaeology, with the help of technology and science, are bringing us a rich and full cast of people who lived before us. If there is a logic behind Ramirez’s selection of these women, it is not explained, though it is surely deliberate that her chosen figures are less familiar than, say, Margaret of Anjou, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Empress Matilda, about whom many books have already been written.

As this print on demand book is reprinted from a very old book, there could be some missing or flawed pages, but we always try to make the book as complete as possible. To compare, the 2021 London census reported around sixty percent of the population as white and the remaining forty percent as Asian, Black, mixed, and other, encouraging a re-evaluation of London’s medieval streets as similarly cosmopolitan and diverse.