Syndiga kvinnor och dygdiga män : Medeltida sexualetik i Europa

Sammanfattning: This thesis examines the medieval notions of gender and sexuality through the eyes of contemporary scholarly work in this field of research. The dominant medieval notion of women/femininity and men/masculinity has been the focus in my reading and understanding of those texts. I have been presented to medieval texts of different genres. The research deal with the questions of what was considered to be “male”/“female” and how those categories created binary contrasts, and how those in turn created a power imbalance between the above two sexes. The theoretical framework focuses on male dominance and the thesis uses different scholarly work in the search for how they present the male as constructed as normal/virtue/active/culture, and the female as abnormal/vice/passive/nature. The notion of ethics and morals in the thesis is seen as part of the cultural identity and throughout the thesis arguments is found to conclude the fact that all parts of the medieval life was under the control of a hegemonic masculinity. The main research results achieved demonstrates female subordination based on the concepts above as self-evident and as being a fundamental part of the medieval female identity. Keywords: male dominance, hegemony, sexuality, gender, Middle Ages/medieval, binary contrasts