ABSTRACT

Women's writing in any period remains of critical concern, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Alexandra Barratt's edition offers a wide range of texts from the period 1300-1500, including:

  • Original texts written by women in the Middle Ages
  • Texts translated by women in the Middle Ages
  • Prayers, meditations, scriptural comment, and accounts of religious experiences
  • Educational writings
  • Romance, poetry

Each poem is given a headnote, giving details of composition, manuscript and sources. Full on-page annotation is provided giving details of allusions to contemporary religious, historical and social issues. A general introduction gives context to all the pieces and provides a penetrating account of the role of women in a burgeoning society of literary and cultural transmission.

chapter |19 pages

Introduction to the First Edition (1992)

chapter |2 pages

Introduction to the Second Edition

part 1|312 pages

The Texts

chapter 1|15 pages

Middle English Trotula Texts

chapter 2|10 pages

Marie De France

chapter 4|10 pages

Marguerite Porete

chapter 5|13 pages

Elizabeth of Hungary

chapter 6|11 pages

Bridget of Sweden

chapter 7|13 pages

Catherine of Siena

chapter 8|26 pages

Julian of Norwich

chapter 9|24 pages

Christine De Pisan

chapter 10|13 pages

A Revelation of Purgatory

chapter 11|9 pages

Fifteen Prayers Revealed to a Recluse

chapter 12|27 pages

Margery Kempe

chapter 13|13 pages

A Collection of Prayers

chapter 14|9 pages

Women and the Law

chapter 15|16 pages

Eleanor Hull

chapter 16|6 pages

Juliana Berners

chapter 17|5 pages

The Cellaress of Barking Abbey

chapter 18|22 pages

Some Paston Letters

chapter 19|36 pages

Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century Poems

chapter 20|10 pages

Lady Margaret Beaufort