Download or read book Fragmentation and Redemption written by Caroline Walker Bynum and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arguing that historians must write in a comic mode, aware of history's artifice, risks, and incompletion, Caroline Walker Bynum here examines diverse medieval texts to show how women were able to appropriate dominant social symbols in ways that allowed for the emergence of their own creative voices. By arguing for the positive importance attributed to the body, these essays give a new interpretation of gender in medieval texts and of the role of asceticism and mysticism in Christianity.