Medieval Women in the Celtic-Speaking West

This module concerns the status, roles and representation of women in medieval Irish and Welsh society. In broad strokes, the position of medieval women in the Celtic-speaking West will be introduced in relation to that of their contemporaries in Frankish, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon societies. The primary materials for the study of medieval women in the Celtic-speaking West are law tracts, literary texts (both prose and poetry), historical texts and didactic writings, the originals of which were written in Irish, Welsh and Latin, and a selection of the most important of these will be read in translation.
The main topics to be addressed are:

• the legal status of women in the different Celtic-speaking societies, both the relative status of different categories of women, and their status relative to that of males.
• marriage and other kinds of union, and their dissolution;
• prominent female roles in secular society and the church (including that of queens, holy women, and women believed to have supernatural powers);
• the life-cycle of women;
• factors that wrought change in the status of women in medieval Irish and Welsh society
• Consideration will be given to the construction of femininities and masculinities in various genres of writing in the medieval Irish and Welsh vernaculars, and in medieval Latin.
• Learning outcomes:
• Knowledge of an important historical topic.
• Familiarity with a range of medieval Irish and Welsh sources, specifically those concerning the status, roles and representations of women.
• An understanding of gender as a construct.
• Essay writing skills, including the use of a range of literary and editorial conventions.