While it has been built on in a number of significant ways since its publication, Fragmentation and Redemption is still a stimulating and subtle look at the interplay of gender, religion and conceptions of the human body in medieval Europe. Bynum's main themes are the asymmetry of gendered power relationships, and how that created more fluidity/subtlety of gender construction than moderns tend to attribute to the Middle Ages; the forms of women's creativity and religious expression; and the medieval conception of how we inhabit our bodies. I really like her rejection of the simple binary, and her attempt to write history in the 'comic' mode, which are both approaches I hope to bring to my own work.

As a collection of essays, Fragmentation and Redemption mostly holds together well. The last five are neatly linked thematically; the first two, however, suffer a little from addressing 'specific' questions and feel a little limited by that. ( )