To be a virgin or a widow never promised a stable, uniform status to a woman during the Middle Ages. Rather, these positions were areas open to debate, constructions that did and still do create and question notions of gender roles, areas of power, and areas of disability. Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages addresses many facets of these two female positions in medieval literature: gender constructions; the body and what it means to make it visible, whether in admiration, torture, or martyrdom; issues of physicality and abjection; creations of literary voice for women...

The Persistence of Medievalism seeks to examine the ways medieval genre shapes contemporary public culture. Through an exploration of several contemporary cultural phenomena, this book reveals the narrative underpinnings of public discourse. The ways these particular forms of storytelling shape our assumptions are examined by Weisl through a series of examples that demonstrate the intrinsic ways medievalism persists in the modern world, thus perpetuating archaic ideas of gender, ideology, and doctrine.

The paradox of romance as a genre is that it contains multiple possibilities, yet remains profoundly constrained by its own terms and conventions. Through a close reading of several of Chaucer's most important works, Dr Weisl examines Chaucer's use of gender issues to explore and challenge this genre. She argues that Chaucer's complex treatment of the romance, following both continental and Middle English traditions, experiments with and tests romance conventions. Each chapter looks indetail at one or more of Chaucer's works, examining their different approaches to the problems of gender, and...