My book, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture, examines medieval falconry manuals and courtly literature about independent or unruly women, arguing that falconry manuals outlined a process of training to read. In particular, such manuals offered readers an important means of interpreting and understanding poetic texts. My examination of falconry manuals and the narrative poetry that neighbors and evokes them reveals that when these manuals instructed their readers in controlling the flight of a falcon, they simultaneously offered a language by which to understand the forms of control that poetic texts wielded, particularly the control of women in their literary portrayals. Among the texts that I examine are: Frederick II's thirteenth-century treatise on falconry, Marie de France's lai Yonec, the anonymous lay Sir Orfeo, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and the anonymous fabliau Guillaume au Faucon. I look closely at this nexus of falconry and poetry to reveal that while falconry looks like a subjugation metaphor, it actually creates a space for female sovereignty.
Listen to interviews about the book and research on OSU's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies' Nouvelles Pod, Real Fantastic Beasts, and New Books Network.
Listen to interviews about the book and research on OSU's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies' Nouvelles Pod, Real Fantastic Beasts, and New Books Network.