Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages - Giving Voice to Silence. Essays in Honour of Catherine Innes-Parker

Essays on women and devotional literature in the Middle Ages in commemoration and celebration of the respected feminist scholar Catherine Innes-Parker. Silence was a much-lauded concept in the Middle Ages, particularly in the context of religious literature directed at women. Based on the Pauline prescription that women should neither preach nor teach, and should at all times keep speech to a minimum, the concept of silence lay at the forefront of many devotional texts, particularly those associated with various forms of women's religious enclosure. Following the example of the Virgin Mary, religious women were exhorted to speak seldom, and then only seriously and devoutly. However, as this volume shows, such gendered exhortations to silence were often more rhetorical than literal. The contributions range widely: they consider the English 'Wooing Group' texts and female-authored visionary writings from the Saxon nunnery of Helfta in the thirteenth century; works by Richard Rolle and the Dutch mystic Jan van Ruusbroec in the fourteenth century; Anglo-French treatises, and books housed in the library of the English noblewoman Cecily Neville in the fifteenth century; and the resonant poetics of women from non-Christian cultures. But all demonstrate the ways in which silence, rather than being a mere absence of speech, frequently comprised a form of gendered articulation and proto-feminist point of resistance. They thus provide an apt commemoration and celebration of the deeply innovative work of Catherine Innes-Parker (1956-2019), the respected feminist scholar and a pioneer of this important field of study.

General

Imprint:	D.S. Brewer
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Gender in the Middle Ages
Release date:	November 2023
First published:	2023
Editors:	Cate Gunn • Liz Herbert McAvoy • Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa
Contributors:	Jennifer N. Brown (Contributor) • Margaret Margaret Healy-Varley (Customer) • Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Person) • Ayoush Lazikani (Contributor) • Anne Elisabeth Mouron • Shannon Murray • Denis Renevey
Dimensions:	234 x 156mm (L x W)
Pages:	312
ISBN-13:	978-1-84384-662-8
Categories:	Books
LSN:	1-84384-662-4
Barcode:	9781843846628

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