Guidance for Women in Twelfth-Century Convents
Guidance for Women in Twelfth-Century Convents

Author: Vera Petch Morton

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1843842955

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Collection of letters and texts offering guidance for nuns, and including selections from Abelard's letters to Heloise. These translated letters and texts composed for younger and older women in twelfth-century convents illuminate the powerful medieval ideals of virginity and chastity. Abelard's history of women's roles in the church and his letteron women's education, both written for Heloise in her work as abbess, are seen here alongside previously untranslated letters and texts for abbesses and nuns in England and France. An interpretive essay explores the practical and spiritual engagement of women's convents with medieval commemorative and memorial practices, showing that the professional concern of women religious with death goes far beyond the stereotype of nuns as dead to the world, or enclosed in living death. VERA MORTON gained an MA in Medieval Studies at the University of Liverpool in 1994. JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE is Professor of English at Fordham University, NY.

The Book of Encouragement and Consolation
The Book of Encouragement and Consolation

Author: Goscelin (of Saint-Bertin)

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1843842947

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"Goscelin of St Bertin's 'Book of Encouragement and Consolation' (Liber Confortatorius) is extraordinary both as an example of high-medieval spiritual practice and as a record of a personal relationship. Written in about 1083 by the monk Goscelin to a protegee and personal friend, the recluse Eva, it takes up the tradition of St Jerome's letters of spiritual guidance to women, and anticipates medieval advice literature for anchoresses. As a compendious treatise, incorporating numerous exempla, excerpts from theological discussions, and advice on meditative practice, it has much to tell us about the intellectual interests and preoccupations of religious people in the late eleventh century. As a personal document, it allows a fascinating and uncommonly intimate insight into the psychology of religious life, the sense of self, the construction of gender, and the relationships between men and women in the high Middle Ages."--Back cover.

Women as Scribes
Women as Scribes

Author: Alison I. Beach

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-04-29

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780521792431

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Professor Beach's book on female scribes in twelfth-century Bavaria - a full-length study of the role of women copyists in the Middle Ages - is underpinned by the notion that the scriptorium was central to the intellectual revival of the Middle Ages and that women played a role in this renaissance. The author examines the exceptional quantity of evidence of female scribal activity in three different religious communities, pointing out the various ways in which the women worked - alone, with other women, and even alongside men - to produce books for monastic libraries, and discussing why their work should have been made visible, whereas that of other female scribes remains invisible. Beach's focus on manuscript production, and the religious, intellectual, social and economic factors which shaped that production, enables her to draw wide-ranging conclusions of interest not only to palaeographers but also to those interested in reading, literacy, religion and gender history.

Women's Books of Hours in Medieval England
Women's Books of Hours in Medieval England

Author: Charity Scott-Stokes

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1843843005

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English translation of a variety of texts from women's books of hours, with introduction, notes, and an interpretive essay. The book of hours is said to have been the most popular book owned by the laity in the later Middle Ages. This volume brings together a selection of texts taken from books of hours known to have been owned by women. While some will be familiar from bibles or prayer-books, others have to be sought in specialist publications, often embedded in other material, and a few have not until now been available at all in modern editions or translations. The texts arecomplemented by an introduction setting the book of hours in its context, an interpretive essay, glossary and annotated bibliography.

The Power of a Woman's Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures
The Power of a Woman's Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2012-02-13

Total Pages: 461

ISBN-13: 3110897776

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The study takes the received view among scholars that women in the Middle Ages were faced with sustained misogyny and that their voices were seldom heard in public and subjects it to a critical analysis. The ten chapters deal with various aspects of the question, and the voices of a variety of authors - both female and male - are heard. The study opens with an enquiry into violence against women, including in texts by male writers (Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Straßburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach) which indeed describe instances of violence, but adopt an extremely critical stance towards them. It then proceeds to show how women were able to develop an independent identity in various genres and could present themselves as authorities in the public eye. Mystic texts by Hildegard of Bingen, Marie de France and Margery Kempe, the medieval conduct poem known as Die Winsbeckin, the Devout Books of Sisters composed in convents in South-West Germany, but also quasi-historical documents such as the memoirs of Helene Kottaner or Anna Weckerin's cookery book, demonstrate that far more women were in the public gaze than had hitherto been assumed and that they possessed the self-confidence to establish their positions with their intellectual and their literary achievements.

Medieval Writings on Secular Women
Medieval Writings on Secular Women

Author:

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0141968699

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'Woman, who is equal to the moon in the flower of youth, Is equal to a little old ape after the onset of old age' This remarkable collection brings together a host of writings from across different regions and cultures of the Middle Ages, from the ninth to the fifteenth century. They are arranged to follow the life stages of a Medieval woman living a secular existence, from infancy and girlhood, through marriage and motherhood, to widowhood and old age. Some women are famous or captured in exceptional circumstances, many more are anonymous: an abandoned baby in Italy, or an epitaph for the female leader of a Synagogue, speaking across the ages. This selection contains an introduction discussing the Medieval woman's status, separate introductions to each chapter, notes and a bibliography.

The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West
The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West

Author: Alison I. Beach

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-01-09

Total Pages: 1244

ISBN-13: 1108770630

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Monasticism, in all of its variations, was a feature of almost every landscape in the medieval West. So ubiquitous were religious women and men throughout the Middle Ages that all medievalists encounter monasticism in their intellectual worlds. While there is enormous interest in medieval monasticism among Anglophone scholars, language is often a barrier to accessing some of the most important and groundbreaking research emerging from Europe. The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West offers a comprehensive treatment of medieval monasticism, from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. The essays, specially commissioned for this volume and written by an international team of scholars, with contributors from Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, cover a range of topics and themes and represent the most up-to-date discoveries on this topic.

Nuns' Priests' Tales
Nuns' Priests' Tales

Author: Fiona J. Griffiths

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2018-03-20

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0812249755

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List of Abbreviations -- Prologue -- The puzzle of the nuns' priest --Biblical models : women and men in the apostolic life -- Jerome and the noble women of Rome -- Brothers, sons, and uncles : nuns' priests and family ties -- Speaking to the bridegroom : women and the power of prayer -- Conclusion -- Appendix : Beati pauperes.

The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English
The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English

Author: Elaine Treharne

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2010-04-15

Total Pages: 792

ISBN-13: 0191572594

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The study of medieval literature has experienced a revolution in the last two decades, which has reinvigorated many parts of the discipline and changed the shape of the subject in relation to the scholarship of the previous generation. 'New' texts (laws and penitentials, women's writing, drama records), innovative fields and objects of study (the history of the book, the study of space and the body, medieval masculinities), and original ways of studying them (the Sociology of the Text, performance studies) have emerged. This has brought fresh vigour and impetus to medieval studies, and impacted significantly on cognate periods and areas. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English brings together the insights of these new fields and approaches with those of more familiar texts and methods of study, to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of medieval literature today. It also returns to first principles in posing fundamental questions about the nature, scope, and significance of the discipline, and the directions that it might take in the next decade. The Handbook contains 44 newly commissioned essays from both world-leading scholars and exciting new scholarly voices. Topics covered range from the canonical genres of Saints' lives, sermons, romance, lyric poetry, and heroic poetry; major themes including monstrosity and marginality, patronage and literary politics, manuscript studies and vernacularity are investigated; and there are close readings of key texts, such as Beowulf, Wulf and Eadwacer, and Ancrene Wisse and key authors from Ælfric to Geoffrey Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain Poet.