Crusading and masculinities

"The purpose of the volume is to further the work of existing studies which have established the importance of gender as a tool of analysis for understanding the Crusades. The book contains essays by established scholars and early career researchers and takes a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches to a range of primary source materials"--

This volume presents the first substantial exploration of crusading and masculinity, focusing on the varied ways in which the symbiotic relationship between the two was made manifest in a range of medieval settings and sources, and to what ends. Ideas about masculinity formed an inherent part of the mindset of societies in which crusading happened, and of the conceptual framework informing both those who recorded the events and those who participated. Examination and interrogation of these ideas enables a better contextualised analysis of how those events were experienced, comprehended and portrayed. The collection is structured around five themes: sources and models; contrasting masculinities; emasculation and transgression; masculinity and religiosity and kingship and chivalry. By incorporating masculinity within their analysis of the crusades and of crusaders the contributors demonstrate how such approaches greatly enhance our understanding of crusading as an ideal, an institution and an experience. Individual essays consider western campaigns to the Middle East and Islamic responses; events and sources from the Iberian peninsula and Prussia are also interrogated and re-examined, thus enabling cross-cultural comparison of the meanings attached to medieval manhood. The collection also highlights the value of employing gender as a vital means of assessing relationships between different groups of men, whose values and standards of behaviour were socially and culturally constructed in distinct ways.

Introduction / by Natasha R. Hodgson, Katherine J. Lewis and Matthew M. Mesley -- Propaganda and masculinity : gendering the crusades in thirteenth-century sermons / Christoph T. Maier -- The valiant man and the villain in the tradition of the Gesta Francorum : overeating, taunts and Bohemond's heroic status / Simon Thomas Parsons -- ʹAl-Afḍal b. Badr al-Jamalī, the Vizierate and the Fatiid response to the first crusade : masculinity in historical memory / Mathew Barber -- The adolescent and the crusader : journey and rebirth on the path to manhood in the thirteenth century / Anne-Lydie Dubois-Collet -- Masculine attributes of the other : the shared knightly model / Yvonne Friedman -- "The true gentleman" : correct behavior towards women according to Christian and Muslim writers during the period of the crusades / Helen J. Nicholson -- Contrasting masculinities in the crusades against Lithuania : Teutonic knights and crusades in war and recreation in late medieval Prussia / Alan V. Murray -- "Sat at home like your father's daughter" : gendered insults and crusading masculinities in medieval sagas / James Doherty -- Crusader masculinities in health crises, 1095-1274 / Joanna Philli…