Document Type
Article
Peer Reviewed
1
DOI
10.17077/1536-8742.2174
Access Restrictions
Full text restricted to subscribers.
Abstract
The marginal art of two late-thirteenth-century Arthurian romance manuscripts from French-Flanders are rife with motifs depicting violent battles. One such motif is that of a mounted joust between a knight and a woman. The knight is weaponless, but the woman wields a distaff, a tool used to spin wool or flax, as a lance in order to penetrate the knight. By contextualizing this motif with the text of the Vulgate Arthur, as well as the socio-political moment within which the manuscripts were produced, this article seeks to investigate how its inclusion could direct certain interpretations of the narratives in accompanies.
Keywords
Distaff, Marginal Art, Arthurian, Manuscript, Romance, Weapon, Violence, Jousting, Dampierre, Spinning, French-Flanders
Rights Information
Copyright © 2020 the author(s). Rights have been secured for images as long as a copy of the article is shared with the libraries
Recommended Citation
Shartrand, Emily "Distaff as Weapon in the Margins of Two Late-Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Romance Manuscripts." Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 56, No. 1 (2020) : 172-220.
Included in
European Languages and Societies Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Medieval History Commons
