Synopses & Reviews
A collection as accessible as it is important,
Womens Writing in Middle English will prove an essential resource for all those concerned with the history, religion and culture of the Middle Ages.
Alexandra Barratt has selected a range of texts both for their intrinsic interest and for their contribution to our understanding of womens place in the literary culture of the period. There are extracts from texts first written in Middle English by women, texts translated by women into Middle English, and texts composed by women in French and Latin that were available in Middle English translation. These include accounts of religious experiences; prayers and meditations; scriptural commentary; personal letters; educational writings; romance; and poetry. For this second edition, new texts have been added, including womens wills and other legal documents, a nuns form of confession, and more extracts from visionary writings.
A headnote accompanies each set of extracts, together with generous on-the-page annotations and explanatory glosses. The Introduction places the selections in context, and discusses whether such a category as womens writing could be said to exist in the Middle Ages. This new edition also includes a full, updated bibliography of primary and secondary sources.
Alexandra Barratt is Professor of English at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Synopsis
A new edition of the most comprehensive and pedagogically sound anthology of women's writing from the Middle Ages
- Annotated format perfect for the undergraduate or interested reader, with an introduction and notes
- This collection of womens writing in the Middle Ages has been fully updated and expanded, and remains the most extensive on the market
- Part of the relanched Longman Annotated Texts Series
Synopsis
This impressive and pioneering anthology presents extracts in the original Middle English of the various kinds of medieval texts in which women were involved. It explores their place in medieval literary culture and invites readers to judge whether there is such a thing as women's writing' in the Middle Ages.
Synopsis
First published under the Addison Wesley Longman, 1992.
Synopsis
Women's writing in any period remains of critical concern, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Alexandra Barratt's edition offers a wide range of texts from the period 1300-1500, including:
- Original texts written by women in the Middle Ages
- Texts translated by women in the Middle Ages
- Prayers, meditations, scriptural comment, and accounts of religious experiences
- Educational writings
- Romance, poetry
Each poem is given a headnote, giving details of composition, manuscript and sources. Full on-page annotation is provided giving details of allusions to contemporary religious, historical and social issues. A general introduction gives context to all the pieces and provides a penetrating account of the role of women in a burgeoning society of literary and cultural transmission
About the Author
Alexandra Barratt is Professor of English at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Editorial procedure
Introduction
The Texts (extracts)
- Middle English Trotula texts
- Marie de France: Lay le Freine
- Mechtild of Hackeborn and Gertrude the Great : The Book of Ghostly Grace
- Marguerite Porete: The Mirror of Simple Souls
- Elizabeth of Hungary: The Revelations of Saint Elizabeth
- Bridget of Sweden: The Revelations and The Rule of Our Saviour
- Catherine of Siena: The Orchard of Syon
- Julian of Norwich: A Revelation of Love
- Christine de Pisan: The Epistle of Othea and The Body of Policy
- A Revelation of Purgatory: A Revelation Showed to a Holy Woman
- Fifteen Prayers Revealed to a Recluse: The Fifteen Oes
- Margery Kempe: The Book of Margery Kempe
- A Collection of Prayers: The Faits and the Passion of Our Lord Jesu Christ
- Women and the Law
- Dame Eleanor Hull
- Juliana Berners: The Book of Hunting
- The Cellaress of Barking Abbey
- Some Paston Letters
- Fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century poems
- Lady Margaret Beaufort: The Imitation of Christ and The Mirror of Gold to the Sinful Soul
- Fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century prayers
Bibliography
Index