Women, the Book and the Worldly

by Smith, Lesley M.; Taylor, Jane H. M.

• ISBN13: 9780859914796
• ISBN10: 0859914798
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-12-01
• Publisher: Ds Brewer

Summary

This second volume of proceedings from the Women and the Book' conference, held at St Hilda's College, Oxford in 1993, brings together fifteen papers dealing with women's experience in the secular literary world. It covers the whole variety of roles women might take, as patrons, authors, readers, and characters in secular literature; encompassed in its range are well-known characters, real and fictional, such as Christine de Pisan and the Wife of Bath, and the more obscure but no less fascinating topic of women in Chinese medieval court poetry. Like its predecessor Women, the Book, and the Godly(Brewer, 1995), this volume illuminates the world of medieval women with careful scholarship and attention to sources, producing new readings and new materials which shed fresh light on an increasingly important field of study. Contributors: PATRICIA SKINNER, PHILIP E. BENNETT, JENNIFER GOODMAN, CHARITY CANNON-WILLARD, BENJAMIN SEMPLE, ANNE BIRRELL, JEANETTE BEER, MARK BALFOUR, CAROL HARVEY, HEATHER ARDEN, KAREN JAMBECK, JULIA BOFFEY, JENNIFER SUMMIT, MARGARITA STOCKER

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	vii
Introduction	ix
Women, Literacy and Invisibility in Southern Italy, 900-1200	1	(12)
Patricia Skinner
Female Readers in Froissart: Implied, Fictive and Other	13	(12)
Philip E. Bennett
That wommen holde in ful greet reverence': Mothers and Daughters Reading Chivalric Romances	25	(6)
Jennifer R. Goodman
Pilfering Vegetius? Christine de Pizan's Faits d'Armes et de Chevalerie	31	(8)
Charity Cannon Willard
The Consolation of a Woman Writer: Christine de Pizan's Use of Boethius in Lavision-Christine	39	(10)
Benjamin Semple
In the Voice of Women: Chinese Love Poetry in the Early Middle Ages	49	(12)
Anne Birrell
Women, Authority and the Book in the Middle Ages	61	(10)
Jeanette Beer
Francesca de Rimini and Dante's Women Readers	71	(14)
Mark Balfour
The Variant Passages in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and the Textual Transmission of the Canterbury Tales: The `Great Tradition' Revisited	85	(18)
Beverly Kennedy
Philippe de Remi's Manekine: Joie and Pain	103	(8)
Carol J. Harvey
Women as Readers, Women as Text in the Roman de la Rose	111	(8)
Heather Arden
Reclaiming the Woman in the Book: Marie de France and the Fables	119	(20)
Karen K. Jambeck
Lydgate's Lyrics and Women Readers	139	(12)
Julia Boffey
William Caxton, Margaret Beaufort and the Romance of Female Patronage	151	(16)
Jennifer Summit
Apocryphal Entries: Judith and the Politics of Caxton's Golden Legend	167	(16)
Margarita Stocker
Index of Manuscripts	183	(2)
General Index	185