Discussion of the way that women were integrated into medieval society necessarily takes account of their various social roles. This book takes the status of women within medieval society as its general topic, and the studies in this book highlight the division between matrons, who were recognized and integrated into official culture as good women, and marginal women, who were countenanced for their social roles but seen as on the periphery of society - for instance servants, or religious laywomen.

The essays in this book cross the boundaries of literary studies, history and art history.

All share a common concern with the ways in which women, in their various roles, were represented in the material under investigation; all are concerned to address the conventions that governed the perception of these social roles as well as the lives of the women themselves, in representations as diverse as the portrayal of maiden warriors in Old Norse literature and the requirement of women's voices in 13th-century Italian lyrics.