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Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture, 1150-1300

Virginity and its Authorizations

Jocelyn Wogan-Browne author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:1st Mar '01

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Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture, 1150-1300 cover

Writing by and for women in the twelfth and thirteenth century in England is less well known than that of the later medieval period of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. This is the first book-length exploration of a rich literary culture embracing several vernaculars as well as Latin. It focuses particularly on women's uses and adaptations of the powerful ideal of virgin sanctity. Saints' lives were used by lay and religious women in a range of ways, whether as exemplary of vocational biography, as historiography, as texts in the politics of court and convent, or as vernacular theology. As a sampling of this earlier literary culture, saints' lives suggest that there is a wealth of texts and manuscripts which need further study before we can map the literary and linguistic history of women in medieval England.

... not the least of this book's virtues is the help and stimulation it should give to graduate students in this field. For the rest of us, it supplies a mine of information on one's bookshelf, to consult for a long time to come. * Modern Language Review *
The text, let alone the footnotes, is packed with details. * Modern Language Review *
... a formidably documented, meticulously researched book, full of helpful information for specialists and non-specialists alike. * Modern Language Review *
An abundance of largely neglected evidence about the extensive literary activity in England (c.1150-1300) of a small number of women who were writers, readers, scribes, patrons and dedicates. * The Review of English Studies *
This is a book whose very breadth of reference and rich range of material are its raison d'être, offering new facts but also new arguments and syntheses to be worked through from them. * Medium Ævum *
Impeccably scholarly ... Vigorously informed by a feminist politics, this study is a virtuoso redrawing of our map of post-Conquest English cultural history and of Anglo-Norman women's place within it. * Medium Ævum *
Readers of this book will no longer be able unthinkingly to respond to its subject matter as morbid fantasy sponsored by dirigiste clerics ... impressive textual scholarship drives the book ... an invaluable resource. * Notes and Queries *

ISBN: 9780198112792

Dimensions: 243mm x 165mm x 23mm

Weight: 615g

330 pages