The History of British Women's Writing, 700-1500 Volume One

by McAvoy, Elizabeth Herbert; Herbert McAvoy, Liz; Watt, Diane

• ISBN13: 9780230235106
• ISBN10: 0230235107
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-01-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between 700 and 1500. It brings to the fore a wide range of women's literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman alongside that of the English vernacular, demanding a rethinking of the traditions of literary history, and ultimately the concept of 'writing' itself.

Author Biography

Liz Herbert McAvoy is Reader in Gender Studies and Medieval Literature at Swansea University, UK, where she is also Associate Director of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research. She has published widely in the area of medieval women's writing and has recently completed a book entitled Medieval Anchoritisms: Gender, Space and the Solitary Life. Diane Watt is Professor of English and Head of the School of English and Languages at the University of Surrey, UK. She has published widely on medieval literature and culture and her recent publications include Medieval Women's Writing and The Lesbian Premodern (co-edited with Noreen Giffney and Michelle Sauer).

Table of Contents

Series Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Notes on the Contributors	p. xii
Chronology	p. xviii
Writing a History of British Women's Writing from 700 to 1500	p. 1
Pre-texts and Contexts
Women and the Origins of English Literature	p. 31
Literary Production Before and After the Conquest	p. 41
The French of the English and Early British Women's Literary Culture	p. 51
Women Writers in Wales	p. 60
Medieval Antifeminism	p. 72
Bodies, Behaviours, and Texts
Romance	p. 85
Saints' Lives	p. 95
Devotional Literature	p. 103
Marian Literature	p. 112
Late-Medieval Conduct Literature	p. 121
Literacies and Literary Cultures
Women and their Manuscripts	p. 133
Women and Reading	p. 142
Women and Networks of Literary Production	p. 151
Anonymous Texts	p. 160
Women Translators	p. 169
Medieval Women's Letters, 1350-1500	p. 178
Female Authority
Christine de Pizan and Joan of Arc	p. 189
Marie d'Oignies	p. 198
Bridget of Sweden	p. 207
Catherine of Siena	p. 216
Julian of Norwich	p. 223
Margery Kempe	p. 232
A Revelation of Purgatory	p. 241
Select Bibliography	p. 250
Index	p. 262
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