Women and Women's Writing

This is primarily a Select Introductory Bibliography for Paper 8: Medieval women and writing.
* = highly recommended

1. Primary Texts
H.E. Allen and S. Meech ed. The Book of Margery Kempe (EETS 212, 1940)
E. Colledge and N. Chadwick eds.: A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich 2 Parts. (Toronto, 1978)
M. Glasscoe ed. A Revelation of Love, (Exeter,1986)
Marie de France: Fables. ed. & tr. H. Spiegel. (Toronto 1987).
A. Ewert ed. Marie de France: Lais (Oxford, 1944)
J. Rychner ed. Les Lais de Marie de France (Classiques français du Moyen Age 93 (Paris, 1966)
Christine de Pisan  Livre de la Paix ed. C.C. Willard (The Hague, 1958)
----, La Mutacion de Fortune ed. S. Solente, SATF, 4 vols. (Paris, 1959-66)
----, Lavision Christine, ed. Sr. Mary L. Towner (New York, 1969)

2. Background and Surveys
a. Anthologies
 **Carolyne Larrington (ed.) Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook Routledge 1995.
The Writings of Medieval Women tr. M. Thiébaux. (Garland)
*Medieval Women's Visionary Literature ed. E.A. Petroff. (OUP, 1986)
*Medieval Women Writers ed. K.M. Wilson. (Manchester, 1984).

b. General
*D. Baker ed. Medieval Women. (Oxford, 1978)
B. Bolton et al. Women in Medieval Society (Philadelphia, 1976)
*P. Dronke: Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1984)
C. Erickson and K. Casey: 'Women in the Middle Ages: A Working Bibliography' Medieval Studies 37 (1975).
R. Bridenthal and C. Koonz: Becoming Visible: Women in European History. (Boston, 1977)
C. Walker Bynum: Holy Fast and Holy Feast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, (Univ. of California Press, 1987)
M. Erler and M. Kowaleski: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, (Georgia UP 1988)
C. Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford, 1989)
E. Power: Medieval Women ed. M. M. Postan, (Cambridge, 1975)
*S. Shahar: The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages, (London and New York 1983)
B.S. Anderson and J. P. Zinsser: A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present vol. I, (Penguin, 1988)
 

3 Studies of Individual Works
a. Margery Kempe
 D.Aers: Community, Gender and Individual Identity: English Writing 1360-1430. (London, 1988) Ch. 2
chapter in S. Delany: Writing Woman (New York, 1983) Repr. from Minnesota Review 5 (1975): "Sexual Economics, Chaucer's Wife of Bath and Margery Kempe."
*S. Beckwith: "A Very Material Mysticism: The Medieval Mysticism of Margery Kempe." in D. Aers ed. Medieval Literature, Criticism, Ideology and History (Brighton, 1986)
A. Goodman: "The Piety of John Brunham's Daughter of Lynn." in D. Baker ed. Medieval Women. (Oxford, 1978)
C. Atkinson: Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe. (Ithaca, New York, 1983)
K. Lochrie: Margery Kempe and Translations of the flesh, (Philadelphia: UPP Press) 1991.
S. Beckwith, Christ's Body: identity, culture and society in late medieval writings. Routledge, 1993.
 

b. Julian of Norwich
D. Knowles: The English Mystical Tradition, (London, 1961)
R.K. Stone: Middle English Prose Style: Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, (The Hague, 1970)
R.M. Wilson:'Three Middle English Mystics' E&S 9 (1956) 87-112.
B.A. Windeatt: "Julian of Norwich and her Audience' RES 28 (1977)
S. de Beauvoir: The Second Sex, (1949) tr. 1953 chapter on mystics.

c. Marie de France
P. Clifford: Marie de France: Lais (London, 1982)
E.J. Mickel jr.: Marie de France (New York, 1974)
A.C. Henderson 'Medieval Beasts and Modern Cages: the Making of Meaning in Fables and Bestiaries,' PMLA 97, (1982), 40-49.
M. D. Legge: Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background, (Oxford, 1963)
M. Freeman: 'The Power of Sisterhood: Marie de France's "Le Fresne"' in M. Erler and M. Kowaleski: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, (Georgia UP 1988)

d. Christine de Pizan
Primary Texts in translation
Book of the City of Ladies tr. R. Brown-Grant. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999).
Treasure of the City of Ladies tr. S. Lawson. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985)
Letter of Othea to Hector tr. J. Chance. (Focus Library of Medieval Women, 1990)
Excerpts in Middle English translation in A. Barrett, Women’s Writing in Middle English, pp. 137-162. Longman: 1992.

Secondary Texts
Charity Cannon Willard, Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works. New York: Persea Books, 1984.
Susan Schibanoff ‘Taking the Gold out of Egypt’, in Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature, eds. Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson. (London: Routledge, 1994).
Charity Cannon Willard, ‘Christine de Pizan’ in Medieval Women Writers, ed. K. M. Wilson,(Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984).
Maureen Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames.  (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991).
Sheila Delaney, ‘"Mothers to think back through" Who are They? The ambiguous example of Christine de Pizan.’ In S. Delaney, ed. Medieval Literary Politics: Shapes of Ideology. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1990.
C. C. Willard, :'A Fifteenth Century View of Women's role in Medieval Society: Christine de Pizan's Livre des Trois Vertus' in The Role of Women in the Middle Ages, ed. R. T. Morewedge (Albany, 1975)
J. Kelly , 'Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes', Signs 8 (1972), 4-28.

e. other
B. Bolton: "Vitæ Matrum: a further aspect of the Frauenfrage" in D. Baker ed. Medieval Women. (Oxford, 1978).
A. Barratt: "'The Flower and the Leaf' and 'The Assembly of Ladies': Is there a (Sexual) Difference?" Philogical Quarterly 66 (1987) 1-24.
A. Barratt: "Flying in the Face of Tradition: A New View of 'The Owl and the Nightingale." UTQ 56 (1987). 471-485.
E. Hanson-Smith: "A Woman's View of Courtly Love: The Findern Anthology." in Journal of Women's Studies in Literature I (1979).
S. Flanagan: Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life. (Routledge, 1989)
Hildegard of Bingen: Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, (ed.) M. Fox, (Santa Fe: Bear & Co., 1987.)
J.T. Muckle,  'Letter of Heloise on the Religious Life and Abelard's First Reply'. Medieval Studies 17 (1955), 240-81
---,'The Personal Letters of Abelard and Heloise' Medieval Studies 15 (1953) 68-94
P. Knauff: Fictions of Feminine Desire: Disclosures of Heloise. (Lincoln, Neb., 1982)
The Lais of Marie de France tr. R. Hanning and J. Ferrante (New York, 1978)
Beguine Spirituality: An Anthology ed and tr. F. Bowie and O. Davies, (SPCK, 1989)

5. Of related interest
 Middle English Translations of Writings by Continental Women
The Book of Gostlye Grace by Mechtilde of Helfta, ed. T. Halligan (Toronto, 1979)
The Liber Celestis of St. Bridget of Sweden. ed. R. Ellis. (EETS 291) 1987.
The Orchard of Syon. ed. P. Hodgson and G. Liegey (EETS 258) 1966. (15c. translation of Catherine of Siena's Dialogue)

links to:
Medieval Feminist Index
Medieval Feminist Network