Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages

CINDY L. CARLSON is Assistant Professor of English at Metropolitan State College of Denver.ANGELA JANE WEISL is Assistant Professor of English at Seton Hall University.

• Appealing to Ecclesiastical Chivalry: The Widowed Queen in the Encomium Emmae ; R.S.Hollis A Widow's Chaste Vow: Mapping the Influence of Marie's La Vie de Sainte Audre�n Isabella, Countess of Suffolk; V.Blanton-Whetsell Closed Doors: An Epithalamium for Queen Edith, Widow and Virgin; M.Otter Performing Virginity: Sex and Violence in the Katherine Group; S.Salih The Paradox of Virginity with the Anchoritic Tradition: The Masculine Gaze and the Feminine Body in the Wohunge Group; S.M.Chewning Unrepresentable Rape and the Represented Church in Medieval Saints' Lives; K.C.Kelly Widowed Virgins, Viragos, and Authority in the Man of Law's Tale; C.C.Baswell The Violent Violation of Virginia: Family Violence in the Physician's Tale; S.P.Prior Between the Living and the Dead: Widows as Heroines of Medieval Romance; R.Hayward The Disorder of Violence/The Violence of Order: Abjection in the Prioress' Tale; K.M.Hobbs A Fountain Sealed, a Garden Enclosed: Literary Constructions of the Virgin Mary in Medieval French Story, Drama, and Lyric; J.M.Davis Virginity at Court: The Trials of the Virgin in the N-Town Cycle; C.L.Carlson Helpful Widows, Virgins in Distress: Women's Friendship in French Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries; A.Roberts The Widow as Virgin: Desexualized Narrative in the Livre de la Cit�es Dames; A.J. Weisl Transgressive Tears: The Pedagogy of Grief and the Image of the Grieving Widow in Medieval French Culture; L.A.Callahan