Medieval Women, Material Culture, and Power
Matilda Plantagenet and her Sisters
Jitske Jasperse
9781641894609
144 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
This book argues that the impressive range of belongings that can be connected to Duchess Matilda Plantagenet—textiles, illuminated manuscripts, coins, chronicles, charters, and literary texts—allows us to perceive elite women’s performance of power, even when they are largely absent from the official documentary record. It is especially through the visual record of material culture that we can hear female voices, allowing us to forge an alternative way toward rethinking assumptions about power for sparsely-documented elite women.
This book is available as Open Access.