Medieval Women's Writing E-Book

Diane Watt

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Polity Women and Writing Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 458

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Medieval Women's Writing is a major new contribution to our understanding of women's writing in England, 1100-1500. The most comprehensive account to date, it includes writings in Latin and French as well as English, and works for as well as by women. Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the Paston women are discussed alongside the Old English lives of women saints, The Life of Christina of Markyate, the St Albans Psalter, and the legends of women saints by Osbern Bokenham. Medieval Women's Writing addresses these key questions: * Who were the first women authors in the English canon? * What do we mean by women's writing in the Middle Ages? * What do we mean by authorship? * How can studying medieval writing contribute to our understanding of women's literary history? Diane Watt argues that female patrons, audiences, readers, and even subjects contributed to the production of texts and their meanings, whether written by men or women. Only an understanding of textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp fully women's engagement with literary culture. This radical rethinking of early womens literary history has major implications for all scholars working on medieval literature, on ideas of authorship, and on women's writing in later periods. The book will become standard reading for all students of these debates.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Acknowledgements

A Note on the Texts

Introduction

1 Christina of Markyate (c.1096–after 1155)

Introduction

Viewing and reading the St Albans Psalter

The Life and death of Prioress Christina

‘My Sunday daughter’: reading Christina’s Life

Conclusion

2 Marie de France (fl. 1180)

Introduction

The monstrous Marie de France: metamorphosis and reputation

‘Who painted the lion?’ Ambiguity and interpretation

Powers of horror and of translation

Conclusion

3 Legends and Lives of Women Saints (Late Tenth to Mid-Fifteenth Centuries)

Introduction

Reading the lives of saints: Christina of Markyate and the Anglo-Saxon tradition

The saint’s life and the woman writer: Clemence of Barking’s St Catherine

Women patrons and female saints: Osbern Bokenham’s Legends of Holy Women

Conclusion

4 Julian of Norwich (1342/3–after 1416)

Introduction

‘I am really nothing’: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman (the short text)

‘The service and labour of motherhood’: A Revelation of Love (the long text)

‘This revelation is high divinity and high wisdom’: reception and transmission

Conclusion

5 Margery Kempe (c.1373–after 1439)

Introduction

Authors and secretaries

‘A holy woman and a blessed woman’: The Book as saint’s life

‘For our example and instruction’: The Book and its readers

Conclusion

6 The Paston Letters (1440–1489)

Introduction

Absent women

Reading medieval women’s letters

Women correspondents and the writing process

Conclusion

Afterword

Suggestions for Further Reading

Index

Copyright © Diane Watt 2007

The right of Diane Watt to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2007 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-07456-3255-1

ISBN-13: 978-07456-3256-8 (pb)

ISBN: 978-07456-5763-9 (Multi-user ebook)

ISBN: 978-07456-5764-6 (Single-user ebook)

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Acknowledgements

Medieval Women’s Writing is a book that I have wanted to write for a long time. Years of studying, learning, teaching, listening and conversing lie behind it; the writing was, of course, just the final stage. The debts I have accumulated are so many that it is not possible to acknowledge all of them here. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to identify some individuals and organizations that have made this book possible. I would like to thank Jocelyn Wogan-Browne for her generous support and encouragement, and Karen Cherewatuk for the help she gave me in the project’s earlier stages. Amy Appleford, Ruth Evans and Nicholas Watson shared work with me prior to publication, from which I benefited greatly. For the opportunity to present research that went into this book, I would like to thank Raluca Radulescu, Bob Hasenfratz, Glenn Burger and Steve Kruger, Emma Campbell, Anke Bernau and David Matthews, and Liz Herbert McAvoy and Colman O’Clabaigh. In Fall 2005, I had the good fortune to be awarded the Charles A. Owen, Jr Distinguished Visiting Professorship in Medieval Studies at the University of Connecticut. The graduate class I taught there enabled me to explore some of the ideas in this book with exceptionally motivated and lively students. Special mention must be made of Josh Eyler, Erin Lien, Nadia Pawelchak, Becky Perry and Britt Rothauser. Thanks also to Bob Hasenfratz for inviting me to Connecticut, and for doing so much to make me feel welcome. I should also mention my doctoral students working on medieval literature at Aberystwyth University, past and present, especially Liz Herbert McAvoy, Malte Urban, Robin Gilbank and Janet Gunning. I extend a general thanks to all the Masters and undergraduate students over the years who have shared my love of medieval women’s writing, for our lively discussions and for their perceptive and sometimes hilarious observations, which often enabled me to see old texts in a completely new light. I am grateful to the Department of English Literature at Aberystwyth University and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for enabling me to take a year’s study leave in 2006, thus making possible the timely completion of this book. I would also like to thank Sally-Ann Spencer, formerly commissioning editor for literary studies at Polity, for inviting me to write the book in the first place, and especially her successor, Andrea Drugan, for seeing it through to realization with such enthusiasm, patience and professionalism. The anonymous readers for Polity and assessors for the Arts and Humanities Research Council offered engaged, thoughtful and constructive criticism at various stages of this project, from inception to completion. Heike Bauer has been here throughout to discuss ideas, to read and to comment upon my writing, to suggest new perspectives and to offer me much needed reassurance. I can never thank her enough. Patricia Watt has, once again, been a careful reader of my work. Clare A. Lees also read the draft manuscript, made many useful suggestions and was incredibly compassionate in her criticisms. In the final stages of the writing of this book, Clare and I shared many ideas, and, indeed, the afterword arose directly out of one of our conversations. It is through knowing her that I have gained new insights into how collaboration and feminism work, and work together. This book is, therefore, dedicated to Clare.

A Note on the Texts

In this book, accessibility has been one of my primary concerns. My target audience includes undergraduate students as well as postgraduates and scholars working in the field of medieval English literature, as well as those interested in women’s writing in later periods, and in literary history, and specifically feminist literary history. The medieval works I discuss here are written in Latin and French as well as Old and Middle English. I have therefore decided, wherever possible, to quote from my sources in modern English, either using readily available published translations, or providing my own translations or modernizations. However, in order to preserve some sense of the original languages, and to enable some attention to linguistic detail, wherever I quote at length I also provide the original text following the translation. In addition, I quote and discuss the original language in the text of my argument where it is crucial to a specific point that I am making. I have followed these practices whatever the language of the original text because I do not want to imply a linguistic hierarchy or to make any assumptions about the linguistic training of my readers. Only limitations of space have prevented me from quoting in translation and in the original languages throughout.

Introduction

When did women writers first enter the English literary tradition? This apparently straightforward question is impossible to answer simply because it is the wrong one to ask. Women’s writing in the Middle Ages, especially prior to the fourteenth century, remains peripheral not only to conventional masculinist accounts of the literary canon but also to feminist (re-)constructions of women’s literary history. The relative dearth of texts identifiable as by women and the lack of biographical information about medieval women writers have contributed to this tendency. Other factors include the often religious (and thus ‘non-literary’) content of surviving works, the problem of writing not in the medium of English, and the question of authorial agency in medieval culture’s different models of the relationship between composition and writing. This study, which examines women’s writing produced in England, primarily in the period between 1100 and 1500, and written in the three literary languages of the period, Latin, French and English, aims to stand as a corrective. The very existence of a ‘tradition’ of women’s writing in the Middle Ages is still in fact widely contested. This applies especially to the marginalized Anglo-Saxon period, which, although chronologically outside the scope of this study as a whole, is considered in terms of the continuity of influence of the Old English saints’ lives and in relation to questions of their reception. Most medieval women’s writing was religious in content and so the primary focus here is on devotional texts – specifically saints’ lives and visionary and mystical treatises – although more overtly literary works, as well as personal letters, are included. Atypically of studies of women’s literary history, women’s writing is here interpreted broadly to include both writing by women (‘women-authored’), such as Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and the Paston women, and writing for and about women (‘women-oriented’), such as The Life of Christina of Markyate, the St Albans Psalter and the legends of women saints by Osbern Bokenham. A central argument of this book is that the drawing of a firm distinction between these types of texts does not necessarily stand up to scrutiny: that female patrons, audiences, readers and even subjects can contribute to the production of texts and their meanings, whether they be written by men or by women. In other words, only an understanding of medieval textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp the nature and extent of women’s engagement with and contribution to literary culture.

This introduction addresses two central questions. The first is: What can studies of medieval women’s writing contribute to our understanding of women’s literary history more broadly; in other words, in what ways can they challenge pre-existing exclusionary paradigms and help to construct new enabling ones? The second question is to what extent medieval notions of ‘authorship’ are useful when considering women’s writing. As we will see in the next section, feminist scholars have made the case for extending the definition of women’s writing to include a range of texts not typically considered women-authored. The scope of this book differs somewhat in emphasis in its inclusion of women-oriented texts alongside original compositions by women, translations, compilations and a range of texts that are the product of collaboration between a female ‘author’ and male secretaries. Furthermore, at the end of the final chapter on the letters of the Paston women, I specifically examine the problems with trying to identify the ‘gender’ of a narrative voice. Underpinning my selection of authors and texts is the conviction that writing cannot be understood in isolation from its intended and/or actual readership or audience, an audience that for some of these texts may be not exclusively female but male or mixed. In addressing the question of authorship, I explore the ways authors and readers/audience work together to produce meaning. Ultimately the blurring of the distinction between women-authored and women-oriented texts that I trace could be extended to other medieval texts, from conduct books to romances, and to a broader range of devotional material produced for and read by women, including manuscripts and miscellanies known to have been owned by women. Importantly, the insights that emerge from this study might usefully be extended to women’s writings of other (earlier and later) periods.