Pawns or players?

Studies on medieval and early modern women

Christine Meek & Catherine Lawless editors

The passive and active of 'pawns or players' is in many ways the kernel of the ongoing debate within the analysis of the role of women in the past. The essays, by both established and younger scholars and covering a wide time-span and geographical area, range from examinations of the laws which restrained or enabled women to discussions of women who resisted the authorities, from studies of women who stepped outside their prescribed role and behaved in a manner that might be described as 'manly' to analyses of the constructions of gender and womanhood that influenced such prescriptions.

Christine Meek lectures in medieval history at Trinity College. She edited The fragility of her sex? Medieval Irish women in the their European context (1997) and Women in Renaissance & early modern Europe (2000). Catherine Lawless lectures in history at the University of Limerick and is a contributor to numerous books on medieval Ireland and Europe.