Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500

Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 6
Copyright......Page 7
Contents......Page 8
List of illustrations......Page 10
List of abbreviations......Page 11
Chronology: women and literature in Britain, 1150–1500......Page 12
Introduction......Page 40
1. The power and the weakness of women in Anglo-Norman romance......Page 46
2. Women as lovers in early English romance......Page 63
3. Mothers in Middle English romance......Page 80
4. ‘Clerc u lai, muïne u dame’: women and Anglo-Norman hagiography in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries......Page 100
5. Women in No Man's Land: English recluses and the development of vernacular literature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries......Page 125
6. ‘Women talking about the things of God’: a late medieval sub-cultur......Page 143
7. ‘… alle the bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch’: laywomen and their books in late medieval England......Page 167
8. Women authors and women's literacy in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England......Page 198
9. Women and their poetry in medieval Wales......Page 222
Further reading......Page 241
Index of manuscripts......Page 254
Index of names and titles......Page 257