Le Moyen Âge

The volume on the Middle age period begins with the discourses on women, by theologians, philosophers, moralists, physicians, economists, and rulers who decided how women should behave, what dresses and jewels they should wear. Those discourses are the first and richest sources that historians of the Middle Ages are confronted with, long before the economic or social sources, much more difficult to find and to study. This chapter deals also with the third volume of the Histoire des Femmes en Occident that unfortunately is not represented in the book as the two directors, Arlette Farge and Natalie Zemon Davis could not come to the conference. The authors of the volume on the Early Modern Age made different choices: it starts with the ‘reality’ of women’s life, their work and their everyday life and continues with the representations and the ‘dissidences’. Each volume has its autonomy, and reflects the choices of each author. Among the themes that are absent from the second volume, the religious minorities, that were part of the urban societies during the Middle Ages and the eating habits and taste of the populations have been widely studied in the last decades

Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · History · Medieval Literature and History · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies