Reading Memory and Identity in the Texts of Medieval European Holy Women

by Cotter-Lynch, Margaret; Herzog, Brad

• ISBN13: 9780230619869
• ISBN10: 023061986X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This collection of essays examines a range of texts commemorating European holy women from the ninth through fifteenth centuries. The contributors explore the relationship between memorial practices and identity formation in two ways: first, by showing how women drew upon traditions and memories in fashioning their own lived lives; and secondly, by showing how both male and female authors used medieval memory arts to portray those lives for contemporary and future audiences. This book draws upon much of the recent scholarly interest in the nature and uses of memory, and will interest scholars of medieval literature, medieval religious history, feminist scholars, and historians of rhetoric.

Author Biography

Margaret Cotter-Lynch is an associate professor in the Department of English, Humanities, and Languages at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Her research focuses on the representation of gender in early medieval hagiography. Her current book project is entitled Mother, Gladiator, Saint: The Transformations of St. Perpetua across the Middle Ages. Brad Herzog is an associate professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University. His publications address the role of memory arts in the composition of Julian of Norwich's Showings and The Book of Margery Kempe.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xxi
List of Contributors	p. xxiii
Introduction	p. 1
Nuns on Parade: Memorializing Women in Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa	p. 13
Mnemonic Sanctity and the Ladder of Reading: Notker's "In Natale Sanctarum Feminarum"	p. 39
Envisioning a Saint: Visions in the Miracles of Saint Margaret of Scotland	p. 57
Secret Designs/Public Shapes: Ekphrastic Tensions in Hildegard's Scivias	p. 81
Imitating the Imagined: Clemence of Barking's Life of St. Catherine	p. 105
Memory, Identity, and Women's Representation in the Portuguese Reception of Vitae Patrum: Winning a Name	p. 135
"In mei memoriam facietis": Remembering Ritual and Refiguring "Woman" in Gertrud the Great of Helfta's Exercitia spiritualia	p. 165
Making a Place: Imitatio Mariae in Julian of Norwich's Self-Construction	p. 187
Portrait of a Holy Life: Mnemonic Inventiveness in The Book of Margery Kempe	p. 211
Master Bibliography	p. 235
Index	p. 255
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