From the tenth to the twelfth centuries in England and Scotland we have
scant evidence of women's writing. How, then, can we access these
women's experiences?
This book argues that by analysing texts deliberately written forand
addressed directly to women we gain an insight into the horizons of
possibility for their lives. It examines religious texts addressed to
women, bringing together works that are more widely studied with others
that are less well known, and demonstrates continuities across Old
English and Latin texts written for female readers and patrons across
the Conquest period. Case studies, ranging from Ælfric's sermons to
Aelred's De institutione inclusarum, from the Life of Christina of
Markyate to Goscelin's saints' lives for Wilton and Barking Abbeys,
attend to the intimate scripts women were encouraged to inhabit through
a close focus on the form of the textual address.By concentrating on
address, the book illuminates how women were encouraged to live, and by
following women's commissioning and copying of texts, it demonstrates
which of these textual addresses women valued and attempted to follow.
KATHRYN MAUDE is Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at the
American University of Beirut.