GENDERED KNOWING IN DHUODA’S LIBER MANUALIS

Resumo

Dhuoda is well-known as the author of the Liber manualis, a ninth-century “princely mirror” written for her son, William. While much has been made of the fact that she emphasizes in the Liber her weakness as a woman and her rights as a mother, little attention has been devoted to the ways in which Dhuoda articulates a kind of knowing based on her gender and maternity. I therefore explore in this paper several moments in the Liber in which Dhuoda would seem to insist on a gendered way of knowing the world. These moments allow readers to understand more fully Dhuoda’s project as one both grounded in the traditions of the Christian handbook and the princely mirror, but also written on its own terms, as a record of a feminine way of knowing just as important as Christian truth or noble action plied in the world of powerful men.