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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.
Initiates a wider development of inquiries into women's literary
cultures to move the reader beyond single geographical, linguistic,
cultural and period boundaries. Since the closing decades of the
twentieth century, medieval women's writing has been the subject of
energetic conversation and debate. This interest, however, has
focused predominantly on western European writers working within
the Christian tradition: the Saxon visionaries, Mechthild of
Hackeborn, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Gertrude the Great, for example,
and, in England, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe are cases in
point. While this present book acknowledges the huge importance of
such writers to women's literary history, it also argues that they
should no longer be read solely within a local context. Instead, by
putting them into conversation with other literary women and their
cultures from wider geographical regions and global cultures -
women from eastern Europe and their books, dramas and music; the
Welsh gwraig llwyn a pherth (woman of bush and brake); the Indian
mystic, Mirabai; Japanese women writers from the Heian period;
women saints from across Christian Europe and those of
eleventh-century Islam or late medieval Ethiopia; for instance -
much more is to be gained in terms of our understanding of the
drivers behind and expressions of medieval women's literary
activities in far broader contexts. This volume considers the
dialogue, synergies, contracts and resonances emerging from such
new alignments, and to help a wider, multidirectional development
of this enquiry into women's literary cultures.
During the Middle Ages, the arresting motif of the walled garden -
especially in its manifestation as a sacred or love-inflected
hortus conclusus - was a common literary device. During the Middle
Ages, the arresting motif of the walled garden - especially in its
manifestation as a sacred or love-inflected hortus conclusus - was
a common literary device. Usually associated with the Virgin Mary
or the Lady of popular romance, it appeared in myriad literary and
iconographic forms, largely for its aesthetic, decorative and
symbolic qualities. This study focuses on the more complex
metaphysical functions and meanings attached to it between 1100 and
1400 - and, in particular, those associated with the gardens of
Eden and the Song of Songs. Drawing on contemporary theories of
gender, gardens, landscape and space, it traces specifically the
resurfacing and reworking of the idea and image of the enclosed
garden within the writings of medieval holy women and other
female-coded texts. In so doing, it presents the enclosed garden as
generator of a powerfully gendered hermeneutic imprint within the
medieval religious imaginary - indeed, as an alternative "language"
used to articulate those highly complex female-coded approaches to
God that came to dominate late-medieval religiosity. The book also
responds to the "eco-turn" in our own troubled times that attempts
to return the non-human to the centre of public and private
discourse. The texts under scrutiny therefore invite responses as
both literary and "garden" spaces where form often reflects
content, and where their authors are also diligent "gardeners": the
apocryphal Lives of Adam and Eve, for example; the
horticulturally-inflected Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad of Hohenburg
and the "green" philosophies of Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias; the
visionary writings of Gertrude the Great and Mechthild of Hackeborn
collaborating within their Helfta nunnery; the Middle English poem,
Pearl; and multiple reworkings of the deeply problematic and
increasingly sexualized garden enclosing the biblical figure of
Susanna.
Translation and facing text of an important female-authored work
from the late middle ages. A Revelation of Purgatory was written by
an unnamed woman, almost certainly an anchoress, in Winchester in
1422. It details from a first-person perspective a series of
terrifying visions experienced by the author in which she witnesses
the purgatorial sufferings of a former friend named Margaret who
makes her way through the blazing fires of purgatory tormented by
devils, the "worm of conscience", and - uniquely - her two former
pets, a fierce little cat and dog. Through her prayer and the
prayers she elicits from her own circle of influential priests, the
anchoress is eventually able to deliver Margaret to the doors of
the heavenly Jerusalem. Made available here in accessible
parallel-text format with extended introduction and annotation, the
Revelation is an important text: not only does it testify to
popular and religious concerns with the afterlife in the late
Middle Ages but also underscores the significant role played by
women in mitigating the suffering of souls in purgatory by means of
their personal interventions. The text also bears witness to female
friendship, effective intergender dialogue, and the central role
played by an anchoress in those communities with which she
interacted, be they spiritual, institutional or personal. Liz
Herbert McAvoy is Professor of Medieval Literature at Swansea
University.
An examination of the importance of anchoritism to social, cultural
and religious life in the middle ages. Originating in the deserts
of northern Africa in the early years of Christianity, anchoritism,
or the enclosed solitary life, gradually metamorphosed into a
permanent characteristic of European religiosity; from the twelfth
century onwards, and throughout the middle ages, it was embraced
with increasing enthusiasm, by devoted laywomen in particular. This
book investigates the wider cultural importance of medieval
anchoritism within the different religious landscapes and climates
of the period. Drawing upon a range of contemporary gender and
spatial theories, it focuses on the gender dynamics of this
remarkable way of life, and the material spaces which they
generated and within which they operated. As such, it unites
related - but too often discrete - areas of scholarship, including
early Christian anchoritism, anchoritic guidance texts and
associated works, fourteenth and fifteenth-century holy womenwith
close anchoritic connections, and a range of other less known works
dealing with or connected to the anchoritic life. Dr LIZ HERBERT
MCAVOY is Senior Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Studies
at Swansea University
An examination of the growth and different varieties of anchoritism
throughout medieval Europe. The practice of anchoritism - religious
enclosure which was frequently solitary and voluntarily embraced,
very often in a permanent capacity - was widespread in many areas
of Europe throughout the middle ages. Originating in the desert
withdrawal of the earliest Christians and prefiguring even the
monastic life, anchoritism developed into an elite vocation which
was popular amongst both men and women. Within this reclusive
vocation, the anchorite would withdraw, either alone or with others
like her or him, to a small cell or building, very frequently
attached to a church or other religious institution, where she or
he would - theoretically at least - remain locked up until death.
In the later period it was a vocation which was particularly
associated with pious laywomen who appear to have opted for this
extreme way of life in their thousands throughout western Europe,
often as an alternative to marriage orremarriage, allowing them,
instead, to undertake the role of "living saint" within the
community. This volume brings together for the first time in
English much of the most important European scholarship on the
subject to date. Tracing the vocation's origins from the Egyptian
deserts of early Christian activity through to its multiple
expressions in western Europe, it also identifies some of those
regions - Wales and Scotland, for example - where thephenomenon
does not appear to have been as widespread. As such, the volume
provides an invaluable resource for those interested in the
theories and practices of medieval anchoritism in particular, and
the development of medieval religiosity more widely. Dr LIZ HERBERT
MCAVOY is Professor of Medieval Literature at Swansea University.
CONTRIBUTORS: Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Gabriela Signori, M. Sensi,
G. Cavero Dominguez, P. L'Hermite-Leclercq, Mari Hughes-Edwards,
Colman O Clabaigh, Anna McHugh, Liz Herbert McAvoy.
One of the most important medieval writers studied in historical
and literary context. Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth/early
fifteenth-century anchoress and mystic, is one of the most
important and best-known figures of the Middle Ages. Her
Revelations, intense visions of the divine, have been widely
studied and read; the first known writings of an English woman,
their influence extends over theology and literature. However, many
aspects of both her life and thought remain enigmatic. This
exciting new collection offers a comprehensive, accessible coverage
of the key aspects of debate surrounding Julian. It places the
author within a wide range of contemporary literary, social,
historical and religious contexts, and also provides a wealth of
new insightsinto manuscript traditions, perspectives on her writing
and ways of interpreting it, building on the work of many of the
most active and influential researchers within Julian studies, and
including the fruits of the most recent,ground-breaking findings.
It will therefore be a vital companion for all of Julian's readers
in the twenty-first century. Dr Liz Herbert McAvoy is Senior
Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Studies at Swansea
University. Contributors: Denise M. Baker, Alexandra Barratt,
Marleen Cre, Elisabeth Dutton,Vincent Gillespie, Cate Gunn, Ena
Jenkins, E.A. Jones, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Laura Saetveit Miles, Kim
M. Philips, Elizabeth Robertson,Sarah Salih, Annie Sutherland,
Diane Watt, Barry Windeatt.
A consideration of the ways in which the past was framed and
remembered in the pre-modern world. The training and use of memory
was crucial in medieval culture, given the limited literacy at the
time, but to date, very little thought has been given to the
complex and disparate ways in which the theory and practices of
memoryinteracted with the inherently unstable concepts of time and
gender at the time. The essays in this volume, drawing on
approaches from applied poststructural and queer theory among
others, reassess those ideologies, meanings and responses generated
by the workings of memory within and over "time". Ultimately, they
argue for the inherent instability of the traditional
gender-time-memory matrix (within which men are configured as the
recorders of "history"and women as the repositories of a more
inchoate familial and communal knowledge), showing the Middle Ages
as a locus for a far more fluid conceptualization of time and
memory than has previously been considered. Elizabeth Cox is
Lecturer in Old English at Swansea University; Roberta Magnani is
Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Swansea University; Liz Herbert
McAvoy is Professor of Medieval Literature at Swansea University.
Contributors: Anne E. Bailey, Daisy Black, Elizabeth Cox, Fiona
Harris-Stoertz, Ayoush Lazikani, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Pamela E.
Morgan, William Rogers, Patricia Skinner, Victoria Turner.
This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between
700 and 1500. It brings to the fore a wide range of women's
literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman
alongside that of the English vernacular, demanding a rethinking of
the traditions of literary history, and ultimately the concept of
'writing' itself.
This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between
700 and 1500. It brings to the fore a wide range of women's
literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman
alongside that of the English vernacular, demanding a rethinking of
the traditions of literary history, and ultimately the concept of
'writing' itself.
This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between
700 and 1500. It brings to the fore a wide range of women's
literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman
alongside that of the English vernacular, demanding a rethinking of
the traditions of literary history, and ultimately the concept of
'writing' itself.
An exploration of the relations between medical and religious
discourse and practice in medieval culture, focussing on how they
are affected by gender. Current preoccupations with the body have
led to a growing interest in the intersections between religion,
literature and the history of medicine, and, more specifically, how
they converge within a given culture. This collection of essays
explores the ways in which aspects of medieval culture were
predicated upon an interaction between medical and religious
discourses, particularly those inflected by contemporary gendered
ideologies. The essays interrogatethis convergence broadly in a
number of different ways: textually, conceptually, historically,
socially and culturally. They argue for an inextricable
relationship between the physical and spiritual in accounts of
health, illness and disability, and demonstrate how medical,
religious and gender discourses were integrated in medieval
culture. Naoe Kukita Yoshikawa is Professor of English in the
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Shizuoka University.
Contributors: Louise M. Bishop, Elma Brenner, Joy Hawkins, Roberta
Magnani, Takami Matsuda, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Irina Metzler, Denis
Renevey, Patricia Skinner, Juliette Vuille, Diane Watt, Naoe Kukita
Yoshikawa.
Essays challenging the orthodox opinion of anchorites as entirely
divorced from the world around them. Much of the research into
medieval anchoritism to date has focused primarily on its liminal
and elite status within the socio-religious cultures of its day:
the anchorite has long been depicted as both solitary and alone,
almost entirely removed from community and living a life of
permanent withdrawal and isolation, in effect dead to the world.
Considerably less attention has been afforded to the communal
sociability that also formed part of the reclusivelife during the
period, The essays in this volume, stemming from a variety of
cross-disciplinary approaches and methodologies, lay down a
challenge to this position, breaking new ground in their
presentation of the medievalanchorite and other types of enclosed
solitary as playing a central role within the devotional life of
the communities in which they were embedded. They attest also to
the frequent involvement of anchorites and other recluses in local,
national and, sometimes, international matters of importance.
Overall, the volume suggests that, far from operating on the
socio-religious periphery, as posited previously, the medieval
anchorite was more often found at theheart of a sometimes
intersecting array of communities: synchronic and diachronic;
physical and metaphysical; religious and secular; gendered and
textual. CATE GUNN has taught in the Continuing Education and
LiteratureDepartments of the University of Essex; LIZ HERBERT
MCAVOY is Professor of Medieval Literature at Swansea University.
Contributors: Diana Denissen, Clare Dowding, Clarck Drieshen, Cate
Gunn, Catherine Innes-Parker, E.A. Jones, Dorothy Kim, Liz Herbert
McAvoy, Godelinde Perk, James Plumtree, Michelle Sauer, Sophie
Sawicka-Sykes, Andrew Thornton OSB,
An examination of ways in which the writings of Julian of Norwich
and Margery Kempe were affected by traditional and contemporary
attitudes towards women. The writings of Julian of Norwich and
Margery Kempe show an awareness of traditional and contemporary
attitudes towards women, in particular medieval attitudes towards
the female body. This study examines the extent to which they make
use of such attitudes in their writing, and investigates the
importance of the female body as a means of explaining their
mystical experiences and the insight gained from them; in both
writers, the female body is central to their writing, leading to a
feminised language through which they achieve authority and create
a space in which they can be heard, particularly in the context of
their religious and mystical experiences. The three archetypal
representations of woman in the middle ages, as mother, as whore
and as "wise woman", are all clearly present in the writings of
Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe; in examining the ways in which
both writers make use of these female categories, McAvoy
establishes the extent of their success in resolving the tension
between society's expectations of them and their own lived
experiences as women and writers. LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY is Senior
Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Literature, College of
Arts and Humanities, Swansea University
One of the most important medieval writers studied in historical
and literary context. Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth/early
fifteenth-century anchoress and mystic, is one of the most
important and best-known figures of the Middle Ages. Her
Revelations, intense visions of the divine, have been widely
studied and read; the first known writings of an English woman,
their influence extends over theology and literature. However, many
aspects of both her life and thought remain enigmatic. This
exciting collection offers a comprehensive, accessible coverage of
the key aspects of debate surrounding Julian. It places the author
within a wide range of contemporary literary, social, historical
and religious contexts, and also provides a wealth of new insights
into manuscript traditions, perspectives on her writing and ways of
interpreting it, building on the work of many of the most active
and influential researchers within Julian studies, and including
the fruits of the most recent, ground-breaking findings. It will
therefore be a vital companion for all of Julian's readers in the
twenty-first century. Dr LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY is Senior Lecturer in
Gender in English and Medieval Studies at Swansea University.
CONTRIBUTORS: KIM M. PHILLIPS, CATE GUNN, ALEXANDRA BARRATT, DENISE
M. BAKER, DIANE WATT, E.A. JONES, ANNIE SUTHERLAND, BARRY WINDEATT,
MARLEEN CRE, ELISABETH DUTTON, ELIZABETH ROBERTSON, LAURA SAETVEIT
MILES, LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY, ENA JENKINS, VINCENT GILLESPIE, SARAH
SALIH
An examination of the growth and different varieties of anchoritism
throughout medieval Europe. The practice of anchoritism - religious
enclosure which was frequently solitary and voluntarily embraced,
very often in a permanent capacity - was widespread in many areas
of Europe throughout the middle ages. Originating in the desert
withdrawal of the earliest Christians and prefiguring even the
monastic life, anchoritism developed into an elite vocation which
was popular amongst both men and women. Within this reclusive
vocation, the anchorite would withdraw, either alone or with others
like her or him, to a small cell or building, very frequently
attached to a church or other religious institution, where she or
he would - theoretically at least - remain locked up until death.
In the later period it was a vocation which was particularly
associated with pious laywomen who appear to have opted for this
extreme way of life in their thousands throughout western Europe,
often as an alternative to marriage orremarriage, allowing them,
instead, to undertake the role of "living saint" within the
community. This volume brings together for the first time in
English much of the most important European scholarship on the
subject to date. Tracing the vocation's origins from the Egyptian
deserts of early Christian activity through to its multiple
expressions in western Europe, it also identifies some of those
regions - Wales and Scotland, for example - where thephenomenon
does not appear to have been as widespread. As such, the volume
provides an invaluable resource for those interested in the
theories and practices of medieval anchoritism in particular, and
the development of medieval religiosity more widely. Dr LIZ HERBERT
MCAVOY is Professor of Medieval Literature at Swansea University.
CONTRIBUTORS: Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Gabriela Signori, M. Sensi,
G. Cavero Dominguez, P. L'Hermite-Leclercq, Mari Hughes-Edwards,
Colman O Clabaigh, Anna McHugh, Liz Herbert McAvoy.
Margery Kempe's text draws on her maternal, female body to
illuminate her relationship to the divine. A unique narrative of
sin, sex and salvation, The Book of Margery Kempe comprises a text
which has continued to perplex and fascinate contemporary audiences
since its discovery in the library of an English country house
in1934. Simultaneously exasperating, endearing, vulnerable and
eccentric, Margery Kempe, mother of fourteen children and wife to a
bemused John Kempe, provides us with an autobiographical account of
her own singular brand of affective piety - excessive weeping, lack
of bodily control, compulsive travelling, visionary meditations -
and the growth of what she regarded as an individual and privileged
mystical relationship with Christ. This new excerpted, thematically
organised translation of the challenging text focuses on passages
which will contextualise for the reader its author's reliance upon
the experiences of her own maternal and sexualised body in an
attempt to gain spiritual and literary authority. With detailed
introduction and challenging interpretive essay, this volume
uncovers in particular the importance of motherhood, sexuality and
female orality to the inception and expression of Margery Kempe's
singular mystical experiences and adds to contemporary debate
regarding the agency of holy women during the later middle ages.
LIZ HERBERT McAVOY is Lecturer in Medieval Language and Literature,
University of Leicester.
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