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The pitfalls of linear time: using the medieval female life cycle as an organising strategy

Patricia Skinner Orcid Logo

Reconsidering Gender, Time and Memory in Medieval Culture, Pages: 13 - 28

Swansea University Author: Patricia Skinner Orcid Logo

Abstract

This chapter examines the applicability of life-cycle as a structuring tool in the study of women’s lives in the past. Taking as its starting point what commentators such as Carolyn Dinshaw have identified as masculinist conceptions of linear time, as expressed in such schemata as ‘the ages of man’,...

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Published in: Reconsidering Gender, Time and Memory in Medieval Culture
ISBN: 9781843844037
Published: 2015
Online Access: http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14715
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa26953
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Abstract: This chapter examines the applicability of life-cycle as a structuring tool in the study of women’s lives in the past. Taking as its starting point what commentators such as Carolyn Dinshaw have identified as masculinist conceptions of linear time, as expressed in such schemata as ‘the ages of man’, it will argue that the apparent order and linearity of a lifetime, and its expectation of smooth progress from one life stage to the next, is an illusory ideal, interrupted and disrupted by actual life events.
Keywords: Gender, time, life cycle
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Start Page: 13
End Page: 28