Negotiating Gender Roles in Fourteenth-Century Bohemian Literature and Performance: Marian and Magdalenian Laments

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F25%3A73630236" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/25:73630236 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.136640" target="_blank" >http://dx.doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.136640</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.136640" target="_blank" >10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.136640</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Negotiating Gender Roles in Fourteenth-Century Bohemian Literature and Performance: Marian and Magdalenian Laments

Original language description

The chapter tracks the subversive role of gendered Passion devotional practices in the performative creation of communal body in medieval societies. I present in it the acts of reading and performing Passion narratives, especially the type of affective meditations on the Passion called Marian laments (planctus Mariae), as a specific type of gendered performance that casts their readers in feminine subject positions ‒ especially in the roles of spouse, mother, or feminized man (McNamer). Based on the example of Latin, Old Czech, and Middle High German Marian and Magdalenian laments composed in the Bohemian Kingdom during the fourteenth century, I discuss the possible effects these and similar texts and their performance might have had on their target audience, especially the nuns and clerics of the Benedictine nunnery of St. George in Prague Castle. Some benefits of pious meditation on the Laments were most certainly enjoyed both by men and women alike, such as deepening their spiritual life and interiorizing dogmas concerning Christ’s salvific death, or the importance of the Eucharist for the life of a Christian. However, female believers also gained something else, and perhaps more than their male counterparts, from reading and listening to accounts of Christ’s torments on the cross: recognition of the uniqueness of the female position in the history of salvation and the possibility of likening oneself, even on a very practical level to the true bride of Christ.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60206 - Specific literatures

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

Communicating the Passion The Socio-Religious Function of an Emotional Narrative (1250-1530)

ISBN

978-2-503-61062-7

Number of pages of the result

35

Pages from-to

39-73

Number of pages of the book

399

Publisher name

Brepols

Place of publication

Turnhout

UT code for WoS chapter

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