Women Readers in the Middle Ages [Paperback]

This fascinating study opens up the world of the medieval woman reader to new generations of scholars and students.Throughout the Middle Ages, the number of female readers was far greater than is commonly assumed. This fascinating study opens up the world of the medieval woman reader to new generations of scholars and students.Throughout the Middle Ages, the number of female readers was far greater than is commonly assumed. This fascinating study opens up the world of the medieval woman reader to new generations of scholars and students.Throughout the Middle Ages, the number of female readers was far greater than is commonly assumed. D. H. Green shows that, after clerics and monks, religious women were the main bearers of written culture and its expansion. Moreover, laywomen played a vital part in the process whereby the expansion of literacy brought reading from religious institutions into homes, and increasingly from Latin into vernacular languages. This study assesses the various ways in which reading was practised between c.700 and 1500 and how these differed from what we mean by reading today. Focusing on Germany, France and England, it considers the different categories of women for whom reading is attested (laywomen, nuns, recluses, semi-religious women, heretics), as well as women's general engagement with literature as scribes, dedicatees, sponsors and authors. This fascinating study opens up the world of the medieval woman reader to new generations of scholars and students.Introduction; Part I. Reading in the Middle Ages: 1. Literal reading; 2. Figurative reading; Part II. Women and Reading in the Middle Ages: 3. Categories of women readers; 4. Women's engagement with literature; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index. Encyclopedic, explosive, pointedthese are the adjectives that leap to mind as I reflect back on the experience of reading D.H. Greens masterful study of medieval women readers, more specifically those we can identify in the written traditions andlCU