Customer Reviews

Women of the Twelfth Century, Volume 1: Eleanor of Aquitaine and Six Others

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Georges Duby, the doyen of French medieval historians, paints as precise a picture of contemporary social conditions as he does of individual people, in this case Eleanor of Aquitaine and six others. Duby has the ability to select individual human studies as if they were loose threads and weave them with others into a coherent social web. He also wrote a profile, "William Marshall: The Flower of Chivalry," about that extraordinary warrior whom Eleanor ransomed and took into her service. (The village of Charlton Marshall, near my home in Dorset, preserves Marshall's name.) In the present title, "Women of the Twelfth Century..." Duby captures essences, painting portraits of the feminine condition for high-born or educated women in difficult times.

Speaking of women in difficult times, the cover illustration (from a church mural c. 1200) reminds us of such a time. A figure who may be Eleanor (left) is shown with her daughter-in-law, Isabella of Angoulême, King John's second wife. Isabella was a bride whom John actually stole from another man at the altar! Almost to the day when John joined her to take their wedding vows, Isabella thought she was marrying someone else. This and other incidents compelled Isabella to emulate her mother-in-law, becoming another strong woman with attitude! If this is Isabella, the cover illustration is well chosen. That incident goes a long way to point up the weird medieval world that high-born women had to endure, and which Duby describes so well in his text.

Robert Fripp, author of
Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitane and six others is the first book of a trilogy on women by Georges Duby. It is an interesting approach to the writer who, not many years ago named the Middle Ages "the age of men". Duby brings some light into a still obscure part of medieval history which is the condition of women. The essays are well written and easily understood by all readers, specialized or not. He focuses on the image created of women, and that's the main problem with the text. By insisting on images of women he fails to bring into light the reality of women's lives to emphasize the representation of women and not women themselves.