The Feminine in the Secret History of the Mongols
Professor Christopher Atwood (University of Pennsylvania
Warlike masculinity has been central to outsiders’ conception of the Central Eurasian nomads, to the genre of epic with which the Secret History is often associated, and to the idea of Mongol nationalism for which the text is often taken as a charter. At the same time, the Secret History has become famous for its “strong women characters”, most notably Chinggis (or “Genghis”) Khan’s mother Mother Ö’elun, and his principal wife Madame Börte. Beyond these elements, however, the anonymous Secret History contains a complex vision of women’s lives and roles in the building of the Mongol empire, complex enough that one may ask “Was ‘Anonymous’ a woman in this case too?” Most peculiarly, the Middle Mongolian in which the Secret History was written has a feminine grammatical gender, one which is used in peculiar and variable ways throughout the work. Based on his new Penguin Classic translation of the work, Christopher P. Atwood will discuss the multiple types of feminine in the work.