Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Janina Ramirez (Author, Narrator), Penguin Audio (Publisher)

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Extraordinary women have held positions of power throughout history. But, aside from the select few, why do we not hear about them?

The middle ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, Saints and Kings: a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But by digging a little deeper into the truth, drawing on evidence from all disciplines, we can see that the 'dark' ages were anything but. BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women's names struck out of historical records, with the word femina annotated beside them. Male gatekeepers of the past ordered books to be burnt, artworks to be destroyed, and new versions of myths, legends and historical documents to be produced, which has manipulated our view of history.

By weaving a vivid and evocative picture of the lives of the women who influenced their society, we discover not just why these remarkable individuals were removed from our collective memories, but also how many other misconceptions underpin our historical narratives, altering the course of history, upholding the oppressive masculine structures of their present, and affecting our contemporary view of the past.

Listening Length

11 hours and 55 minutes
Author

Janina Ramirez
Narrator

Janina Ramirez
Audible release date

21 July 2022
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Audio
ASIN

B09G3KTT85
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	11 hours and 55 minutes
Author	Janina Ramirez
Narrator	Janina Ramirez
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.co.uk Release Date	21 July 2022
Publisher	Penguin Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B09G3KTT85
Best Sellers Rank	246 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 1 in Medieval European History 2 in Ancient History (Audible Books & Originals) 2 in Women History

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An absolute banger

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 July 2022

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Dr Janina is one of my favourite historians, and introduced me to the work of Julian of Norwich, which in quite convinced got me through a nasty ICU spell in 2021. As a trans man who loves history I was anxious about this book, because there is a dominant movement of transphobia running through the academy of late.

I needn't have been

Femina is an absolute tour de force, presenting medieval women's lives in an accessible text that is no less academically rigorous for that same accessibility. The citations are extensive and informative, each woman's life is set in both the discovery of her in modern times as it is in the context of her own life, and Dr J makes extensively the point that the view we have of the medieval is inaccurately sanitised in gendered, racial and social class terms. Medieval London was pretty much as diverse as it is now. People who were gender non-confirming existed then as they do now.

Femina is a magnificent book, which highlights so many of the ways women have been marginalised through recent years and emphasises that misogyny hasn't actually changed as much as we think it has. It's an important work that shows the need to interrogate what we are taught and what we believe, and which allows us to see that new technologies, far from obscuring the past, allow us to confirm what we have lost in received knowledge, which gives us a clearer path into the future.

8 people found this helpful

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Francis D.

Warriors, spies, outlaws, polymaths and kings...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 July 2022

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Warriors, spies, outlaws, polymaths and kings, Ramirez takes us on a fascinating journey to discover the women written out of our past. Femina is a vital work – a tour-de force, reframing the Middle Ages and taking a new approach to history that reveals the complexity and variety of medieval women so often curated out of the narrative.

5 people found this helpful

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Kaz

FEMINA

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 July 2022

Verified Purchase

DrJaninaRamirez's latest book, #FEMINA, is incredible & informative.

You don't have to be an historian to access & enjoy this original & highly enjoyable work.

It has excellent illustrations from texts, artwork & a very famous embroidery.

Her scholarly knowledge is shared with such warmth, openness & passion, it is a joy to read & you'll discover that some things you thought you knew, were actually just a little bit different.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Enjoy your read!

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Outstanding

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 August 2022

Verified Purchase

Janina Ramirez is one of the most original and entertaining historians exploring the Medieval world. "Femina" seems to have a revelation on every other page and I can't recommend it highly enough. By focusing on the individuals like Hildegard von Bingen and demonstrating their genius Ramirez holds a mirror up to how the neglect these women received is a disservice to history itself.

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PGMM

Revelatory!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 August 2022

Verified Purchase

I've just finished reading this and was TRANSFIXED! Also loved filling the enormous gaps in my knowledge - for example how many of us have heard of Cynethryth?! Without this wonderful book I doubt if I would ever have come across her. I bought it as I've been commissioned to make a sculpture for permanent installation in the Minster in King's Lynn celebrating the life of Margery Kempe and thought it would broaden my knowledge of her, which it certainly did. It also however revealed my woeful lack of knowledge of the era and has opened the door to many hours of happy research. Thank you Nina and HUGE congratulations, it's a revelatory tour de force, wonderfully scholastic, hugely accessible and beautifully written.

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TrishG

Brilliant

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 August 2022

Verified Purchase

I am not a historian just an avid reader. Loved this booked and read it in a couple of days. Really interesting and thought provoking.

One person found this helpful

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Carlton

Thought provoking series of essays

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 July 2022

This is a thought provoking book, which is successful in that it has made me further question popular history books for the general reader, and it is well written and engaging. I’m dissatisfied to the extent that it is (hopefully) making a historically dated argument (I may be optimistic here!) and does so in a disjointed way.

The book is a series of essays about various medieval women, but I found it dissatisfying overall, since other than relating to medieval women, the essays are otherwise disconnected. As the only narrative thread linking these stories is that they are about women, it does not provide the “new history of the Middle Ages” which is the book’s subtitle, and I found any pattern too fragmentary, although the essays are engagingly written and well researched. Ramirez’s excellent introductory essay concludes identifying the book’s purpose more honestly: “We need a new relationship with the past, one which we can all feel a part of. Finding these extraordinary medieval women is a first step, but there are so many other silenced voices waiting to have their stories heard.”

Ramirez’s essay style of an introduction to each chapter’s subject by reference to a relatively contemporary event (for example the 1997 canonisation of the fourteenth century Jadwiga, “King” of the Poles in chapter 7), followed by an imaginative verbal recreation of an event in the individual’s life and then an exploration of their wider historical significance is a good approach. But it does become repetitive and underlines the discontinuity of the essays.
The book is well illustrated with photos of artefacts, artistic reconstructions and useful maps, but for me there appears to be an idiosyncratic choice of historical figures, some well known, others unknown (the Loftus “Princess”), although each essay is engaging and full of interesting stories. Also, after introducing her eminent women in the early chapters, Ramirez can appear to go off on a tangent due to the lack of records, but skilfully brings the narrative back to her chosen exemplar of a worthy woman in the period, providing relevant context for their significance.

In her final thoughts, Ramirez says : “Like so many others, I have been led by generations of historians before me, their contemporary agendas often presented in the guise of empirical truths. I have tried a different, but similarly loaded, approach in this book, putting the spotlight on women. It is no less biased, and is representative of the time in which I am writing. But by re-examining extraordinary women like Hildegard and Margery, casting a new light on over-written females like Æthelflæd and Jadwiga, and using recent discoveries to reconstruct lost individuals like the Loftus Princess and Birka Warrior Woman, the medieval world has taken on a different complexion.”

My overall impression is of the book trying to make a larger argument (thesis) from a collection of engaging essays about medieval women who were influential in their time. Instead the book reads like a collection of case studies with which to make the argument that the role of historically significant medieval women has been downplayed when histories of the medieval period were being being written in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. This is “topped and tailed” with essays outlining Ramirez’s argument, that the histories of the medieval period need to be expanded to reflect the simplification and distortion of women’s roles, and this book provides some examples of historically significant medieval women.
The challenge identified in this book can be seen to have been accepted in books such as Michael Woods’ 40th anniversary updating of In Search of the Dark Ages published earlier this year, which includes new chapters on the historically significant Anglo Saxon women Aethelflaed, Lady Wynflaed and Eadgyth. The ongoing challenge for popular history writers will be to incorporate the stories of historically significant women seamlessly into broader narrative history, so widening our understanding. It is a difficult balancing act to show relevance and significance, but not to be read by modern readers as just inclusion as positive discrimination of “token” women.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.

7 people found this helpful

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Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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