Role models and Women

An article in the BBC Sports section this morning set me off thinking about role models past and present... Who did girls look up to? Why? Who do we remember and why?

Two things stuck out to me:

1. The women the general public remember from the wider medieval period are the sensational, not the politically active (or at least not primarily FOR being politically active), not the religious nor the wholesome...
2. Plus ça change - looks remain important...

Who are key medieval women?

How does the fact that they were female affect how they are viewed in their own time and historically?

Giovanna di Napoli / Giovanna d'Angiò - was a Queen in her own right, yet her reign seems frequently to be analysed in the light of her femininity (or lack), her alleged sexual indescretions and whether she was complicit in the murder of her first husband.

And it's not just medieval women either. Ask many lay persons about Catherine the Great of Russia, and they will talk of her as the woman who allegedly died having intercourse with a horse (she didn't), or who had innumerable lovers.

To Be Continued

(Publishing as part of a push to stop leaving stuff eternally in draft)

Where am I now?

So where am I now with regards to research? What has changed?

Current topics

• The history of personal hygiene in the wider Middle Ages
• Medievalism and the modern perception of the Medieval period
• Rosaries
• The source of the concept of the filthy Middle Ages

Future (near and distant)
This covers areas which interest me, but which either I don't have the time or skill (yet?) to research, or which I am looking into incidentally to other research

• National and social insults - "Filthy viking marauders", "effete Italians", "impassive Germans" and so on...
• Links between Muscovy/Rus and the British Isles - mostly interested in the elite and trading links
• The Varangarians
• Women's roles in borderlands - especially looking at the Welsh Marches, how women interacted across the borders in times of peace and war, cross border relationships etc.
• The daughters of Yaroslav the Wise.
• The place and role of women in medieval court life.
• Pre-modern Royal ladies-in-waiting - who were they, what did they actually do, what happened to them once their mistresses moved on, either through marriage, political deposition of their husband, or death?
• Women in Russian folklore - Rusalka, Baba Yaga, Vasilissa Prekrasnaia - roles, actions and importance
• Folklore and historicity, e.g. Continuing from my BA thesis and looking at the links between Russian folklore and real historical periods (i.e. Do folk tales represent an era, an idealised era, etc.)

Some posts will be a short series outlining my thinking on each of these. My intention is that these will serve as indexes to thinking each subject, although I will use tags for indexing as well (The Librarian in me goes deep ;D)