Women and Literature in Britain, 11501500 [Paperback]

This book investigates women's literacy, authorship and patronage, and their representation in literature in medieval Britain.Focusing on women's access to a written culture and their representation in literature in late medieval Britain, this collection of essays explores their engagement with Anglo-Norman, English, Welsh and Latin. It addresses orality and literacy and women's exclusion from a written tradition.Focusing on women's access to a written culture and their representation in literature in late medieval Britain, this collection of essays explores their engagement with Anglo-Norman, English, Welsh and Latin. It addresses orality and literacy and women's exclusion from a written tradition.This collection of essays focuses on the questions of women's access to a written culture and their representation in literature in late medieval Britain. It explores women's engagement with Anglo-Norman, English, Welsh and Latin, and addresses such issues as orality and literacy and women's exclusion from a written tradition. It considers the historical evidence for women's activity as writers, patrons and readers, and examines the representation of women within different literary genres--both secular and religious--their possession or lack of power, and their roles as lovers, mothers and saints.Chronology; List of illustrations; Introduction; 1. The power and the weakness of women in Anglo-Norman romance Judith Weiss; 2. Women as lovers in early English romance Flora Alexander; 3. Mothers in Middle English romance Jennifer Fellows; 4. 'Clerc u lai, muine u dame': women and Anglo-Norman hagiography in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Jocelyn Wogan-Browne; 5. Women in no-man's land: English recluses and the development of vernacular literature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Bella Millett; 6. 'Women talking about the things of God': a late medieval subculture Felicity Riddy; 7. '... Alle the bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch': laywomen and thelSX