Women and Literature in Britain, 1150 1500 - Paperback

by Alastair Minnis (Editor), Patrick Boyde (Editor), John Burrow (Editor)

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.

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This collection of essays offers a pioneering review of women's access to literary culture in medieval Britain, and their representation within it. The rise of female literacy and women's activities as writers, patrons and readers, are examined in the context of wider questions of orality and literacy. The representation of women in different literary genres, secular and religious, shows the ways in which their position was understood in a variety of roles, as lovers, mothers and saints. This revised edition, newly available in paperback, includes a unique chronology offering a woman-centred perspective on historical and literary events before 1500, together with a guide to further reading.