Virilitas in tijden van verandering : religieuze en profane mannelijkheden in de Nederlanden, ca. 1050-1300

Abstract

This study is a diachronous and comparative analysis of the ideals and realities of masculinity in the Low Countries during the period from the middle of the eleventh century to the thirteenth century. This was a time of great change and diversification in both the religious and secular worlds. In order to approach the complexity of society at that time this study refers back to dozens of very diverse narrative source texts, which not only give information about men from all ranks and social strata, but which also show the diverse discursive strategies with which ideals of masculinity were constructed and realised. Moreover, these original sources allow – to some extent – the effect of cultural models on the lives of individual men to be gauged. The thesis not only offers a discussion of high medieval masculinity in the Low Countries, stretched between a regulated cenobitic life on the one hand, and a predominantly knightly aristocratic world on the other, but also an illustration of how masculinity studies can profit from broader and more homogeneous source material from a specific period and region which can be interrogated on different levels.

Public defense: 2016-11-10 16:00

This study is a diachronous and comparative analysis of the ideals and realities of masculinity in the Low Countries during the period from the middle of the eleventh century to the thirteenth century. This was a time of great change and diversification in both the religious and secular worlds. In order to approach the complexity of society at that time this study refers back to dozens of very diverse narrative source texts, which not only give information about men from all ranks and social strata, but which also show the diverse discursive strategies with which ideals of masculinity were constructed and realised. Moreover, these original sources allow – to some extent – the effect of cultural models on the lives of individual men to be gauged. The thesis not only offers a discussion of high medieval masculinity in the Low Countries, stretched between a regulated cenobitic life on the one hand, and a predominantly knightly aristocratic world on the other, but also an illustration of how masculinity studies can profit from broader and more homogeneous source material from a specific period and region which can be interrogated on different levels.

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