This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between 700 and 1500, a period traditi... more This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between 700 and 1500, a period traditionally marginalized in accounts of women's writing in English. Such marginalization, the editors argue, has been brought about in part by the erroneous assumption that there were no women writers operating in Britain before the emergence of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The History of British Women's Writing 700-1500 therefore vigorously refutes this premise by focusing on a wide range of texts written by, for, and in collaboration with women from the Anglo-Saxon period through to the beginning of the sixteenth century.
By also considering women's writing in the context of the deeply multicultural and multilingual milieu which was medieval 'Britain', it uncovers a wide range of women's literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman as well as in the English vernacular and, in so doing, demands a rethinking of the long-established traditions of 'English' literary history – and even the concept of 'writing' itself.
When has using the term “lesbian”not been considered an anachronistic gesture? This question lies... more When has using the term “lesbian”not been considered an anachronistic gesture? This question lies at the heart of this important new collection of essays. The Lesbian Premodern engages key scholars in lesbian studies and queer theory in an innovative conversation in print. Transgressing traditional period boundaries, The Lesbian Premodern scholars to pay full attention to significant and often overlooked theoretical, empirical, and textual work on female same-sex desire and identity in premodern cultures. This provocative book offers a radical new methodology for writing theories and histories of sexuality.
Medieval Women's Writing is a major new contribution to our understanding of women's writing in E... more Medieval Women's Writing is a major new contribution to our understanding of women's writing in England, 1100-1500. The most comprehensive account to date, it includes writings in Latin and French as well as English, and works for as well as by women. Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the Paston women are discussed alongside the Old English lives of women saints, The Life of Christina of Markyate, the St Albans Psalter, and the legends of women saints by Osbern Bokenham.
Medieval Women's Writing addresses these key questions:
Who were the first women authors in the English canon?
What do we mean by women's writing in the Middle Ages?
What do we mean by authorship?
How can studying medieval writing contribute to our understanding of women's literary history?
Diane Watt argues that female patrons, audiences, readers, and even subjects contributed to the production of texts and their meanings, whether written by men or women. Only an understanding of textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp fully women's engagement with literary culture. This radical rethinking of early womens literary history has major implications for all scholars working on medieval literature, on ideas of authorship, and on women's writing in later periods. The book will become standard reading for all students of these debates.
Drawing on a combination of queer and feminist theory, ethical criticism, and psychoanalytic, his... more Drawing on a combination of queer and feminist theory, ethical criticism, and psychoanalytic, historicist, and textual criticism, Diane Watt focuses on the language, sex, and politics in Gower’s writing. She demonstrates that Gower engaged in the sort of critical thinking more commonly associated with Chaucer and William Langland and contributes to modern debates about the ethics of criticism.
Diane Watt sets aside the conventional hiatus between the medieval and early modern periods in he... more Diane Watt sets aside the conventional hiatus between the medieval and early modern periods in her study of women's prophecy, following the female experience from medieval sainthood to radical Protestantism. The English women prophets and visionaries whose voices are recovered here all lived between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries and claimed, through the medium of trances and eucharistic piety, to speak for God. They include Margery Kempe and the medieval visionaries, Elizabeth Barton (the Holy Maid of Kent), the Reformation martyr Anne Askew and other godly women described in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, and Lady Eleanor Davies as an example of a woman prophet of the Civil War. The strategies women devised to be heard and read are exposed, showing that through prophecy they were often able to intervene in the religious and political discourse of the their times: the role of God's secretary gave them the opportunity to act and speak autonomously and publicly.
The lives of women in religious communities in late medieval Europe are the main focus of this vo... more The lives of women in religious communities in late medieval Europe are the main focus of this volume which brings together a body of original research by historians and literary scholars and disucsses a variety of such communities in France, Germany and Wales. The perspective is also broadened to include the lives of women in relation to the local community in places as far apart as East Anglia and southern Italy.
The Paston letters form one of only two surviving collections of fifteenth-century correspondence... more The Paston letters form one of only two surviving collections of fifteenth-century correspondence, in their case especially rich in letters from the women of the family. Clandestine love affairs, secret marriages, violent family rows, bickering with neighbours, battles and sieges, threats of murder and kidnapping, fears of plague: these are just some of the topics discussed in the letters of the Paston women. Diane Watt's introduction seeks to place these letters in the context of medieval women's writing and and medieval letter writing. Her interpretive essay reconstructs the lives of these women by examining what the letters reveal about women's literacy and education, life in the medieval household, religion and piety, health and medicine, and love, marriage, family relationships, and female friendships in the middle ages.
Contemporary ideals of science representing disinterested and objective fields of investigation h... more Contemporary ideals of science representing disinterested and objective fields of investigation have their origins in the seventeenth century. However, 'new science' did not simply or uniformly replace earlier beliefs about the workings of the natural world, but entered into competition with them. It is this complex process of competition and negotiation concerning ways of seeing the natural world that is charted by the essays in this book. The collection traces the many overlaps between 'literary' and 'scientific' discourses as writers in this period attempted both to understand imaginatively and empirically the workings of the natural world, and shows that a discrete separation between such discourses and spheres is untenable.
The collection is designed around four main themes-'Philosophy, Thought and Natural Knowledge', 'Religion, Politics and the Natural World', 'Gender, Sexuality and Scientific Thought' and 'New Worlds and New Philosophies.' Within these themes, the contributors focus on the contests between different ways of seeing and understanding the natural world in a wide range of writings from the period: in poetry and art, in political texts, in descriptions of real and imagined colonial landscapes, as well as in more obviously 'scientific' documents.
This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualiti... more This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualities outside the metropolis. It explores sexualities and sexual experiences in a variety of rural and marginal spaces with international contributions from a wide range of disciplines. These include: literary and cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, geography, history and law. Among the topics uncovered are: * a lesbian in rural England * sexual life in rural Wales * sexuality in rural South Africa * scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics * nature and homosexuality in literature * Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space * how 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.
This article explores the literary culture of Barking Abbey, a vital centre of Anglo-Saxon learni... more This article explores the literary culture of Barking Abbey, a vital centre of Anglo-Saxon learning, when it was under the rule of its second abbess, Hildelith, in the late seventh and early eighth century. Particular attention is given to the intersection of lived practice at Barking and the literary record, focusing on three pieces of evidence: Bede’s account of the early history of Barking in his Ecclesiastical History, written in 731; Aldhelm’s De Virginitate (c.675-680), which was written for Hildelith and her fellow nuns; and a letter written by Boniface around 716 in which he relates the vision of the monk of Much Wenlock. Taken together, the three texts reveal that, under the rule of the academically-minded Abbess Hildelith, Barking Abbey was at the centre of a vibrant network of textual exchange between the abbess and nuns and prominent churchmen and other religious communities.
... I am grateful to the administrators of the University of Wales Aberystwyth College Research F... more ... I am grateful to the administrators of the University of Wales Aberystwyth College Research Fund for generously supporting this project, to Ned Thomas of the University of Wales Press for his encouragement, and to the ... Patricia Watt read through the proofs with painstaking care. ...
why the middle ages matter medieval light on modern injustice by is among the best vendor publica... more why the middle ages matter medieval light on modern injustice by is among the best vendor publications worldwide? Have you had it? Never? Silly of you. Now, you could get this outstanding book merely here. Locate them is format of ppt, kindle, pdf, word, txt, rar, and zip. Just how? Simply download or even review online in this website. Currently, never late to read this why the middle ages matter medieval light on modern injustice.
This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between 700 and 1500, a period traditi... more This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between 700 and 1500, a period traditionally marginalized in accounts of women's writing in English. Such marginalization, the editors argue, has been brought about in part by the erroneous assumption that there were no women writers operating in Britain before the emergence of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The History of British Women's Writing 700-1500 therefore vigorously refutes this premise by focusing on a wide range of texts written by, for, and in collaboration with women from the Anglo-Saxon period through to the beginning of the sixteenth century.
By also considering women's writing in the context of the deeply multicultural and multilingual milieu which was medieval 'Britain', it uncovers a wide range of women's literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman as well as in the English vernacular and, in so doing, demands a rethinking of the long-established traditions of 'English' literary history – and even the concept of 'writing' itself.
When has using the term “lesbian”not been considered an anachronistic gesture? This question lies... more When has using the term “lesbian”not been considered an anachronistic gesture? This question lies at the heart of this important new collection of essays. The Lesbian Premodern engages key scholars in lesbian studies and queer theory in an innovative conversation in print. Transgressing traditional period boundaries, The Lesbian Premodern scholars to pay full attention to significant and often overlooked theoretical, empirical, and textual work on female same-sex desire and identity in premodern cultures. This provocative book offers a radical new methodology for writing theories and histories of sexuality.
Medieval Women's Writing is a major new contribution to our understanding of women's writing in E... more Medieval Women's Writing is a major new contribution to our understanding of women's writing in England, 1100-1500. The most comprehensive account to date, it includes writings in Latin and French as well as English, and works for as well as by women. Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the Paston women are discussed alongside the Old English lives of women saints, The Life of Christina of Markyate, the St Albans Psalter, and the legends of women saints by Osbern Bokenham.
Medieval Women's Writing addresses these key questions:
Who were the first women authors in the English canon?
What do we mean by women's writing in the Middle Ages?
What do we mean by authorship?
How can studying medieval writing contribute to our understanding of women's literary history?
Diane Watt argues that female patrons, audiences, readers, and even subjects contributed to the production of texts and their meanings, whether written by men or women. Only an understanding of textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp fully women's engagement with literary culture. This radical rethinking of early womens literary history has major implications for all scholars working on medieval literature, on ideas of authorship, and on women's writing in later periods. The book will become standard reading for all students of these debates.
Drawing on a combination of queer and feminist theory, ethical criticism, and psychoanalytic, his... more Drawing on a combination of queer and feminist theory, ethical criticism, and psychoanalytic, historicist, and textual criticism, Diane Watt focuses on the language, sex, and politics in Gower’s writing. She demonstrates that Gower engaged in the sort of critical thinking more commonly associated with Chaucer and William Langland and contributes to modern debates about the ethics of criticism.
Diane Watt sets aside the conventional hiatus between the medieval and early modern periods in he... more Diane Watt sets aside the conventional hiatus between the medieval and early modern periods in her study of women's prophecy, following the female experience from medieval sainthood to radical Protestantism. The English women prophets and visionaries whose voices are recovered here all lived between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries and claimed, through the medium of trances and eucharistic piety, to speak for God. They include Margery Kempe and the medieval visionaries, Elizabeth Barton (the Holy Maid of Kent), the Reformation martyr Anne Askew and other godly women described in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, and Lady Eleanor Davies as an example of a woman prophet of the Civil War. The strategies women devised to be heard and read are exposed, showing that through prophecy they were often able to intervene in the religious and political discourse of the their times: the role of God's secretary gave them the opportunity to act and speak autonomously and publicly.
The lives of women in religious communities in late medieval Europe are the main focus of this vo... more The lives of women in religious communities in late medieval Europe are the main focus of this volume which brings together a body of original research by historians and literary scholars and disucsses a variety of such communities in France, Germany and Wales. The perspective is also broadened to include the lives of women in relation to the local community in places as far apart as East Anglia and southern Italy.
The Paston letters form one of only two surviving collections of fifteenth-century correspondence... more The Paston letters form one of only two surviving collections of fifteenth-century correspondence, in their case especially rich in letters from the women of the family. Clandestine love affairs, secret marriages, violent family rows, bickering with neighbours, battles and sieges, threats of murder and kidnapping, fears of plague: these are just some of the topics discussed in the letters of the Paston women. Diane Watt's introduction seeks to place these letters in the context of medieval women's writing and and medieval letter writing. Her interpretive essay reconstructs the lives of these women by examining what the letters reveal about women's literacy and education, life in the medieval household, religion and piety, health and medicine, and love, marriage, family relationships, and female friendships in the middle ages.
Contemporary ideals of science representing disinterested and objective fields of investigation h... more Contemporary ideals of science representing disinterested and objective fields of investigation have their origins in the seventeenth century. However, 'new science' did not simply or uniformly replace earlier beliefs about the workings of the natural world, but entered into competition with them. It is this complex process of competition and negotiation concerning ways of seeing the natural world that is charted by the essays in this book. The collection traces the many overlaps between 'literary' and 'scientific' discourses as writers in this period attempted both to understand imaginatively and empirically the workings of the natural world, and shows that a discrete separation between such discourses and spheres is untenable.
The collection is designed around four main themes-'Philosophy, Thought and Natural Knowledge', 'Religion, Politics and the Natural World', 'Gender, Sexuality and Scientific Thought' and 'New Worlds and New Philosophies.' Within these themes, the contributors focus on the contests between different ways of seeing and understanding the natural world in a wide range of writings from the period: in poetry and art, in political texts, in descriptions of real and imagined colonial landscapes, as well as in more obviously 'scientific' documents.
This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualiti... more This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualities outside the metropolis. It explores sexualities and sexual experiences in a variety of rural and marginal spaces with international contributions from a wide range of disciplines. These include: literary and cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, geography, history and law. Among the topics uncovered are: * a lesbian in rural England * sexual life in rural Wales * sexuality in rural South Africa * scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics * nature and homosexuality in literature * Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space * how 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.
This article explores the literary culture of Barking Abbey, a vital centre of Anglo-Saxon learni... more This article explores the literary culture of Barking Abbey, a vital centre of Anglo-Saxon learning, when it was under the rule of its second abbess, Hildelith, in the late seventh and early eighth century. Particular attention is given to the intersection of lived practice at Barking and the literary record, focusing on three pieces of evidence: Bede’s account of the early history of Barking in his Ecclesiastical History, written in 731; Aldhelm’s De Virginitate (c.675-680), which was written for Hildelith and her fellow nuns; and a letter written by Boniface around 716 in which he relates the vision of the monk of Much Wenlock. Taken together, the three texts reveal that, under the rule of the academically-minded Abbess Hildelith, Barking Abbey was at the centre of a vibrant network of textual exchange between the abbess and nuns and prominent churchmen and other religious communities.
... I am grateful to the administrators of the University of Wales Aberystwyth College Research F... more ... I am grateful to the administrators of the University of Wales Aberystwyth College Research Fund for generously supporting this project, to Ned Thomas of the University of Wales Press for his encouragement, and to the ... Patricia Watt read through the proofs with painstaking care. ...
why the middle ages matter medieval light on modern injustice by is among the best vendor publica... more why the middle ages matter medieval light on modern injustice by is among the best vendor publications worldwide? Have you had it? Never? Silly of you. Now, you could get this outstanding book merely here. Locate them is format of ppt, kindle, pdf, word, txt, rar, and zip. Just how? Simply download or even review online in this website. Currently, never late to read this why the middle ages matter medieval light on modern injustice.
This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualiti... more This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualities outside the metropolis. It explores sexualities and sexual experiences in a variety of rural and marginal spaces with international contributions from a wide range of disciplines. These include: literary and cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, geography, history and law. Among the topics uncovered are: * a lesbian in rural England * sexual life in rural Wales * sexuality in rural South Africa * scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics * nature and homosexuality in literature * Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space * how 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.
In this essay, I explore Julian of Norwich's relationship to a other women prophets in Englan... more In this essay, I explore Julian of Norwich's relationship to a other women prophets in England in the later Middle Ages, focusing particularly on both the recluse, then nun and, later, prioress, Christina of Markyate (c.1096-after 1155), and Julian’s younger East-Anglian lay contemporary, Margery Kempe (c.1373-after 1439).
... 20 The former always takes precedence, the latter has little or no place in scholarly discour... more ... 20 The former always takes precedence, the latter has little or no place in scholarly discourse. ... Gower's major English poem and to explore and to contextualize his treatment of them: language, sex, and politics. ... In so doing I reconsider Gower's literary relationship with Chaucer. ...
As Oxford Dictionaries names an emoji as its 2015 Word of the Year, Professor Diane Watt explores... more As Oxford Dictionaries names an emoji as its 2015 Word of the Year, Professor Diane Watt explores what this means for the English language and highlights the positive impact of another of the shortlisted words.
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Books by Diane Watt
By also considering women's writing in the context of the deeply multicultural and multilingual milieu which was medieval 'Britain', it uncovers a wide range of women's literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman as well as in the English vernacular and, in so doing, demands a rethinking of the long-established traditions of 'English' literary history – and even the concept of 'writing' itself.
Medieval Women's Writing addresses these key questions:
Who were the first women authors in the English canon?
What do we mean by women's writing in the Middle Ages?
What do we mean by authorship?
How can studying medieval writing contribute to our understanding of women's literary history?
Diane Watt argues that female patrons, audiences, readers, and even subjects contributed to the production of texts and their meanings, whether written by men or women. Only an understanding of textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp fully women's engagement with literary culture. This radical rethinking of early womens literary history has major implications for all scholars working on medieval literature, on ideas of authorship, and on women's writing in later periods. The book will become standard reading for all students of these debates.
Diane Watt's introduction seeks to place these letters in the context of medieval women's writing and and medieval letter writing. Her interpretive essay reconstructs the lives of these women by examining what the letters reveal about women's literacy and education, life in the medieval household, religion and piety, health and medicine, and love, marriage, family relationships, and female friendships in the middle ages.
The collection is designed around four main themes-'Philosophy, Thought and Natural Knowledge', 'Religion, Politics and the Natural World', 'Gender, Sexuality and Scientific Thought' and 'New Worlds and New Philosophies.' Within these themes, the contributors focus on the contests between different ways of seeing and understanding the natural world in a wide range of writings from the period: in poetry and art, in political texts, in descriptions of real and imagined colonial landscapes, as well as in more obviously 'scientific' documents.
* a lesbian in rural England
* sexual life in rural Wales
* sexuality in rural South Africa
* scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics
* nature and homosexuality in literature
* Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space
* how 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.
Papers by Diane Watt
By also considering women's writing in the context of the deeply multicultural and multilingual milieu which was medieval 'Britain', it uncovers a wide range of women's literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman as well as in the English vernacular and, in so doing, demands a rethinking of the long-established traditions of 'English' literary history – and even the concept of 'writing' itself.
Medieval Women's Writing addresses these key questions:
Who were the first women authors in the English canon?
What do we mean by women's writing in the Middle Ages?
What do we mean by authorship?
How can studying medieval writing contribute to our understanding of women's literary history?
Diane Watt argues that female patrons, audiences, readers, and even subjects contributed to the production of texts and their meanings, whether written by men or women. Only an understanding of textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp fully women's engagement with literary culture. This radical rethinking of early womens literary history has major implications for all scholars working on medieval literature, on ideas of authorship, and on women's writing in later periods. The book will become standard reading for all students of these debates.
Diane Watt's introduction seeks to place these letters in the context of medieval women's writing and and medieval letter writing. Her interpretive essay reconstructs the lives of these women by examining what the letters reveal about women's literacy and education, life in the medieval household, religion and piety, health and medicine, and love, marriage, family relationships, and female friendships in the middle ages.
The collection is designed around four main themes-'Philosophy, Thought and Natural Knowledge', 'Religion, Politics and the Natural World', 'Gender, Sexuality and Scientific Thought' and 'New Worlds and New Philosophies.' Within these themes, the contributors focus on the contests between different ways of seeing and understanding the natural world in a wide range of writings from the period: in poetry and art, in political texts, in descriptions of real and imagined colonial landscapes, as well as in more obviously 'scientific' documents.
* a lesbian in rural England
* sexual life in rural Wales
* sexuality in rural South Africa
* scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics
* nature and homosexuality in literature
* Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space
* how 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.