Practising shame: Female honour in later medieval England

Flannery, Mary Colleen (2019). Practising shame: Female honour in later medieval England. Manchester medieval literature and culture: Vol. 29. Manchester: Manchester University Press

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Practicing shame investigates how the literature of medieval England encouraged women to safeguard their honour by cultivating hypervigilance against the possibility of sexual shame. A combination of inward reflection and outward comportment, this practice of 'shamefastness' was believed to reinforce women's chastity of mind and body, and to communicate that chastity to others by means of conventional gestures. The book uncovers the paradoxes and complications that emerged from these emotional practices, as well as the ways in which they were satirised and reappropriated by male authors. Working at the intersection of literary studies, gender studies and the history of emotions, it transforms our understanding of the ethical construction of femininity in the past and provides a new framework for thinking about honourable womanhood now and in the years to come.

Item Type:	Book (Monograph)
Division/Institute:	06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of English Languages and Literatures
UniBE Contributor:	Flannery, Mary Colleen
Subjects:	800 Literature, rhetoric & criticism > 820 English & Old English literatures 400 Language > 420 English & Old English languages
ISBN:	978-1-5261-1006-0
Series:	Manchester medieval literature and culture
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Language:	English
Submitter:	Mary Colleen Flannery
Date Deposited:	19 May 2020 10:48
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 15:38
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/143345