Constructing Gender in Medieval Ireland

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Sarah Sheehan, Ann Dooley

   Pages 1-15

3. Travelers and Settled Folk: Women, Honor, and Shame in Medieval Ireland

   • Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha

   Pages 17-38

4. Sex in the Civitas: Early Irish Intellectuals and their Vision of Women

   • Catherine Swift

   Pages 39-55

5. Looking for “Mr. Right” in Tochmarc Becfhola

   • Joanne Findon

   Pages 57-73

6. Playing for Power: Macha Mongrúad’s Sovereign Performance

   • Amy C. Mulligan

   Pages 75-93

7. Feasts for the Eyes: Visuality and Desire in the Ulster Cycle

   • Sarah Sheehan

   Pages 95-113

8. They Kept their Skirts on: Gender-Bending Motifs in Early Irish Hagiography

   • Judith L. Bishop

   Pages 115-132

9. Human Frontiers in Medieval Irish Religious Literature

   • Jennifer Karyn Reid

   Pages 133-151

10. Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Late Medieval Irish Rómánsaíochtai

    • Giselle Gos

    Pages 153-169

11. Speaking with Forked Tongues: Gender and Narrative in the Acallam

    • Ann Dooley

    Pages 171-189

12. Back Matter

    Pages 191-219

    PDF

Medieval Irish texts reveal distinctive and unexpected constructions of gender. Constructing Gender in Medieval Ireland illuminates these ideas through its fresh and provocative re-readings of a wide range of texts, including saga, romance, legal texts, Fenian narrative, hagiography, and ecclesiastical verse.

• gender
• Medieval Literature
• women

"This book is a groundbreaking re-reading of gender construction in Medieval Ireland. Despite Ireland's unique early literature, there has been little produced on this topic, and it is a joy to find contributions from such scholars in one volume. This book will be welcomed for its scope and depth as an invaluable addition to the general medieval field of gender studies, for the amateur and professional scholar alike." - Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin, Senior Lecturer, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland

"The unruly sex-gender systems of medieval Irish literature remain nearly as much a scandal to the conservative heteronormativism of modern scholarship in the field as they were to Romanizing churchmen, proto-colonialist Normans, and Elizabethan carpet-baggers. This collection, at long last, clarifies what scholars of medieval gender have to learn from Irish texts, and why it's high time for Celticists, in their turn, to engage more fully the gender-critical insights of the last three decades." - David Townsend, Professor of Medieval Studies and English, University of Toronto, Canada

"[A] genuine conversation about the gendered implications of medieval Irish literature .Until the recent vote on same-sex marriage, the Irish have rarely taken a revolutionary lead in the battle for gender equity. The authors of this volume, led by Mulligan and Dooley, suggest that Irish ambivalence about sexuality and gender boundaries has its origins in the medievalpast." - The Medieval Review

Judith L. Bishop, Mills College, USA Ann Dooley, University of Toronto, Canada Joanne Findon, Trent University, Canada Giselle Gos, Harvard University, USA Amy C. Mulligan, University of Bergen, Norway Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland Jennifer Karyn Reid, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Sarah Sheehan, Independent Scholar, Toronto Catherine Swift, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland

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