Gender(ed) Identities? Anglo-Norman Settlement, Irish-ness, and The Statutes of Kilkenny of 1367.

Through the analysis of three important texts-Gerald of Wales's Topographia Hibernica, the poem known as both The Song of Dermot and the Earl and The Deeds of the Normans in Ireland, and the 1367 Statutes of Kilkenny-this article seeks to demonstrate that characterizations of the Irish by the English during the first centuries of conquest and settlement established the Irish as differently gendered from the English. This is shown through the use of terms that define the Irish as sexually, socially, and culturally deviant, as unmanly and emasculated, and as legally and culturally inferior even to English women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]