Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 2288
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Nicholson , Francesca.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Seeing Women Troubadours without the "-itz" and "-isms"
  • Source: Seeing Gender: Perspectives on Medieval Gender and Sexuality. Gender and Medieval Studies Conference, King's College, London, January 4-6, 2002.. 2002.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Conference Paper Abstract
  • Subject (See Also): Gender in Literature Literature- Verse Trobairitz Troubadours Women Authors
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  • Abstract: Since “The Voice of the Trobairitz” – a collection of critical essays edited by William Paden – appeared in 1989, it has become common currency to call women troubadours “trobairitz”, a feminisation of “troubadour”. Snappy though the word may be, it is an unproductive designation: a latter-day term of which there is only incidence in an Occitan text (and this not even a troubadour piece), and an artificially segregative term. Whilst earlier scholarship is to be credited for bringing the women troubadours into the light, it is now necessary to view the women troubadours in the context of an ungendered, collaborative, medieval poetic culture; in other words, as troubadours. My paper pursues this stance by presenting texts by women troubadours where the poet does not necessarily speak as a woman. It asks where the woman troubadour positions herself in relation to the Domna construct and the femna derogation, how gender is negotiated from this position, and whether a woman troubadour can indeed be called a woman poet in the sense of cultivating a feminine poetics. It explores the indirect manner in which troubadour identity is articulated, as an after-effect of the subject invoked, suggesting that meshed identities are more prevalent than gendered identities. [Reproduced by permission of the Gender and Medieval Studies Conference Organizers].
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  • Author's Affiliation: Christ's College, Cambridge University
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 2002.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: Not Available