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)