Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 4676
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  • Title: Lionesses Painting Lionesses? Chaucer's Women as Seen by Early Women Scholars and Academic Critics [The author briefly surveys the work of female ph.d. students, mainly in Germany and the United States, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Title note supplied by Feminae.].
  • Source: A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck.  Edited by Juliette Dor.  English Department, University of Liège, 1992.  Pages 178 - 192.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Essay
  • Subject (See Also): Chaucer, Geoffrey, Poet Graduate Students Literary Historians Women in Literature Women Scholars
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: British Isles;Germany;North America
  • Century: 14, 19- 20
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  • Illustrations: Eight figures. Figure One "The Female Student," from the "Fliegende Blätter," 4 (1846): 135. The student is portrayed as arrogantly smoking a ridiculously long pipe and armed with a dagger. Figure Two "Fragment of a Frieze from the Temple of Emancipation," from the "Düssledorfer Manthefte," 1 (1847): 21. The drawing illustrates the disadvantages to men of intellectual women. The man sits engaged in a domestic chore while the woman, dressed in a riding habit and smoking a cigarette, supervises him closely. Figure Three "Dark Side. Zurich Female Students Club," "Kladderadatsch," 25 (1872): 220. The women drink, smoke, play cards, and make sexual overtures to the hapless waiters. Figure Four "Hairstyle à la Socrates," "Fliegende Blätter," 76 (1877): 40. The learned female student is portrayed as balding and bespectacled. Figure Five "A Means for Preventing Talkativeness," "Fliegende Blätter," 76 (1877): 40. The unattractive female student is shown with her mouth sewn shut. Figure Six "On the measure. On guard. A Mouse!," "Fliegende Blätter," 122 (1905): 109-110. The female students ape male duelling but are terrified of a mouse. Figure Seven "The Joyful Alma Mater. Celebrations in Word and Image from University Life," Munich: Braun & Schneider (1910): 98. The female students loudly protest their professor's marraige with horns and cat calls. Figure Eight "The Goethe Philologist," "Simplicissimus," 28 (1924): 522. The unattractive female philologist is said in the caption to contemplate but never experience the eternal feminine.
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  • Year of Publication: 1992.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 2872330046