From Boys to Men, Formation of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe by Ruth M. Karras (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 243 the Index to see that iconography is “alive and well.” If such critics do not have the time to make the trip to Princeton they could alternatively pick up a copy of this fine collection of essays. GRIFFIN MURRAY, Art History, UCLA Ruth M. Karras, From Boys to Men, Formation of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2003) 246 pp. This well-documented, easily accessible study explores the formation of three distinct male identities in late medieval Europe. By focusing on the passage from boyhood to manhood, the book suggests that medieval masculinity was constructed in opposition not only to femininity but also to childhood and bestiality , thus underlining the plurality and complexity of the notion. Ruth Mazo Karras chooses to study how boys become men by looking at a cross-section of medieval European society in a given period (the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries). She explores three of several options available to young medieval men, namely knighthood, scholasticism, and craftsmanship. In each category, she asks the questions: how were the young men evolving in these social contexts expected to demonstrate their manhood? And what did failure to live up to such expectations mean? Men may have been the standard in medieval society, but Karras reminds the reader that all men were not equal under the patriarchal system. She takes care to precise that masculinity was not facing a “crisis” in the period she investigates , in the sense that twentieth-century gender scholars often give to the term, in that it implies a threat from the increased presence of women in key social roles. If crisis there was, it came, she argues, from stratification of society whereby men’s roles were determined by their status at birth. Social pressure affected young men’s training in one context or another, imposing certain expectations on the way they were to differentiate themselves from women, child, or other men. Her case studies therefore examine, on the one hand, the specifics of three different models of masculinities created by three different social contexts: the court, the university, and the workshop. Additionally, they reveal the complexity of such expectations through the investigation of the limitations and failures that many young men may have encountered within each group. Chapter 1 examines the court model of masculinity, through the relationship between the institution of knighthood and the ideology of chivalry in the later Middle Ages. The chapter investigates the significance of the chivalric ideal in the construction of a model of masculinity, which aspired to distinguish itself from concurrent models. In this regard manhood can be said to be demonstrated by domination not only over women, but over other men as well for a place in the social hierarchy. Karras reveals the complexities both of the institution, where intense male bonding went hand in hand with competition, and of the ideology, with its contradictory codes of honor and violence, of piety and of courtliness. The masculine ideal embodied by knighthood thus resulted in a conflicted identity for the young knights in training who had to juggle physical or military prowess and ethical chivalric conduct. As an authorized and even welcome outlet for tension, aggressiveness constituted the core of the knightly male identity. REVIEWS 244 Chapter 2 carries the notion of violence over to the university context, detailing the process through which young scholars learned to step into manhood via the use of metaphorical, verbal attacks as a substitute for physical aggression . Karras delineates student backgrounds and university structure to show that education constituted a primary form of social domination, with its subtext of intellectualism and rationality opposed to the “bestiality” of the noneducated . Furthermore, within the university itself, young scholars competed against each other for their peers’ and mentors’ respect through debates and disputations. The passage from boy to man, symbolized by initiation rituals, implied taking control of one’s impulses to attain yet another model of masculinity : that of the rational man. Karras shows the artificiality and limits of such an ideal by comparing and contrasting it with the bawdy lives of students. As demonstrated by the repeated episodes of physical violence documented in many university towns (towards women in...