Introductory description

‘Who painted the lion?’ The best-known female character in Middle English literature, the Wife of Bath, was written by a man, yet as that text makes clear, Chaucer made women, their relationships, their trials, and their position in relation to textual culture his favourite themes. The medieval period before Chaucer had witnessed a remarkable early flowering of religious literature written in Britain in the vernacular for women (because women generally could not read Latin). The period 1150-1450 also saw the diverse literary outputs of the first named woman author writing in the British Isles (Marie de France), the first woman author writing in English (Julian of Norwich), and the first professional woman writer in Europe (Christine de Pizan).

This module explores the centrality of female voices, real and fictional, to the history of medieval writing by studying Chaucer’s women alongside examples of pre- and post-Chaucerian texts written specifically for female audiences or by women authors. We will focus in particular on writings for and by religious women who lived enclosed lives in anchorholds, exploring these texts' concerns with control of the female body. The module will introduce students to the work of several major female authors writing from the 12th to the 15th centuries in a range of modes (romance, religious vision, love poetry, polemic).

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Introduction: Medieval antifeminisms and the female voice

Week 1. Extracts from antifeminist writings; Chaucer, The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.

Chaucer’s women

Week 2. Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women.

Week 3. Chaucer, The Man of Law’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, The Physician’s Tale.

Two women writers from France: love poetry, romance, and polemic

Week 4. Marie de France, Lais (Penguin translation).

Week 5. Christine de Pizan, Selected Writings (Norton edn)

Religious literature for women

Week 7. Anchoritic literature: selections from Ancrene Wisse

Week 8. Anchoritic literature: texts from the Katherine Group

Week 9. Julian of Norwich, Showings, selections.

Week 10. Lives of female saints

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a coherent and detailed understanding, informed where relevant by recent scholarship, of the variety of women’s experience and writing during the European Middle Ages; of the medieval antifeminist tradition and responses to it; of the ways in which medieval women navigated their relationships to religious and textual authority; of the gendering of voice and authorial identities in medieval texts; and of approaches to medieval texts informed by modern theorisations of gender and sexuality
• Deploy accurately in relation to particular texts their knowledge of the relationships between different genres and of the historical and cultural contexts in which the texts studied were produced.
• Develop an independent and creative response to primary texts studied on the course.
• Apply their knowledge and understanding in order to initiate and carry out an extended piece of writing.

Indicative reading list

David Aers,Community, Gender and Individual Identity: English Writing 1360-1430 (1988)
Alexandra Barratt, ed., Women’s Writing in Middle English (1992)
Alcuin Blamires ed, Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts (2002)
—-, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (1997)
Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (1987)
Rosalind Brown-Grant, Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women (1999)
Glyn S. Burgess, The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Context (1987)
Susan Crane, Gender and Romance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1994)
Marilyn Desmond ed, Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference (1998)
Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing (2003)
Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (1989)
Ruth Evans and Lesley Johson eds, Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature (1994)
Joan Ferrante, To the Glory of her Sex: Women’s Roles in the Composition of Medieval Texts (1997)
Shelia Fisher and Janet Halley, eds, Seeking the Woman in Late Medieval and Renaissance Writings (1989)
Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (2000)
Henrietta Leyser, Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England, 450-1550 (1995)
Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and the Translations of the Flesh (1991)
Carol M. Meale, ed., Women and Literature in Britain 1150-1500 (1996)
Priscilla Martin, Chaucer’s Women: Nuns, Wives and Amazons (1996)
Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead eds, Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practice in Late Medieval England (2001)
Joel Rosenthal, Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History (1990)
Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (1994)
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Culture c. 1150-1300 (2001)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Research element

Independent research for summative essay

International

Includes writers from England and France

Subject specific skills

Demonstrate a coherent and detailed understanding, informed where rele-vant by recent scholarship, of the va-riety of women’s experience and writ-ing during the European Middle Ages; of the medieval antifeminist tradition and responses to it; of the ways in which medieval women navigated their relationships to religious and textual authority; of the gendering of voice and authorial identities in medieval texts; and of approaches to medieval texts informed by modern theorisa-tions of gender and sexuality

Transferable skills

Deploy accurately in relation to par-ticular texts their knowledge of the relationships between different gen-res and of the historical and cultural contexts in which the texts studied were produced.
Develop an independent and creative response to primary texts studied on the course.
Describe and comment on particular aspects of recent research and scholarship
Apply their knowledge and under-standing in order to initiate and carry out an extended piece of writing.