Femina: The instant Sunday Times bestseller – A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It

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She specialises in interpreting symbols and examining works of art, within their own historical context. Careful to underline that she is not re-writing history but rather shifting the focus from men to women, Femina’s overarching goal is to use the visible – physical artefacts – to reveal the seemingly invisible – women. Compassionately reinterpreted here, Jadwiga is revealed as a remarkable woman, who, when placed alongside other women, retells a misunderstood and misremembered medieval past. Janina Ramirez Buch schon kannte - mehr über die reale Person hinter den Seriencharakteren zu erfahren war für mich ein kleines Highlight. Also, there have always been books about powerful women, what can this book contribute re-assessment of history as it only reviews the findings of other archeologist and historians?

In Femina, Janina Ramirez gives us a potted history of the middle ages from the point of view of some of the women of the time. Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Sommige hoofdstukken boeiden me ook meer dan anderen, bvb dat over het tapijt van Bayeux of Hildegard von Bingen. Dr Janina Ramirez, in her new book Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It, uses this item as a point of contact to Jadwiga, the purse’s rich embroidery functioning as symbolic threads narrating the story of Rex Jadwiga, the one and only female ‘king’ of Poland and primary establisher of Jagiellonian University, and Jadwiga the woman.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. In fact they exemplify Ramirez’s argument that the medieval era was a time as rich in human diversity as today. The book is well illustrated with photos of artefacts, artistic reconstructions and useful maps, but for me there appears to be an idiosyncratic choice of historical figures, some well known, others unknown (the Loftus “Princess”), although each essay is engaging and full of interesting stories.

She discusses ways in which medieval women’s stories have been overlooked, rewritten, or even deliberately silenced because of stereotypes and biases. This is a thought provoking book, which is successful in that it has made me further question popular history books for the general reader, and it is well written and engaging. Oxford and BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women’s names struck out of historical records, with the word FEMINA annotated beside them. Margery Kempe was a merchant’s wife in early 15th-century Norfolk who was halfway through a comfortable life when she decided to give up her smart clothes and good table and marry Christ instead.At a stroke ideas about Norse women, and about women in medieval culture generally, were turned upside down. The narrative occasionally loses its thread, describing extensive historical context before circling back to the main subject. Der Texte über den Teppich von Bayeux war ebenfalls deplatziert, man erfährt nichts über die Frauen die den Teppich hergestellt haben (weil es dazu auch gar keine gesicherten Erkenntnisse gibt) - die Autorin gibt nur anekdotisch wieder, was auf dem Teppich zu sehen ist.

It is very factual, not ideal for those who don't know much about medieval times as you will be lost. The Evening Standard, which in 1934 was mostly preoccupied with Hitler’s unsanctioned expansions, found something oddly apt about the fact that Kempe had waited 600 years before revealing herself to the world from the back of someone’s junk cupboard, describing her as “certainly queer, even for a queer age”. Many of the names of people mentioned are written wrong while other words are perfect (I'm Icelandic) and it's jarring; for example, there is no Guthrum in Laxdaela, but there is a Gudrun.She completed an art/literature PhD on the symbolism of birds, which led to a lectureship in York's Art History Department, followed by lecturing posts at the University of Winchester, University of Warwick, and University of Oxford. And its interesting reading forewords and the authorial voice in these projects to see the degree to which they see themselves fighting against orthodoxy (and where they come from).

From royalty and religion to fame and fury, see the medieval world - and the women erased from it - with fresh eyes. Leider hat sich Autorin einiges herausgenommen, was ich von einer ernsthaften Historikerin nie erwartet hätte. As the author admits the book covers only a handful of women, so might I ask…how is individual success of a few women supposed to change the way we see the middle ages?Here is a story of more ordinary female existence in the middle ages to balance against that of the ferocious Birka warrior or the eccentric Margery Kempe.