ABSTRACT
The entanglement of literary and sociocultural worlds in late medieval England’s multilingualism continues to raise questions about the interrelations and differentiations of francophone and English-language practices. This chapter considers a little discussed manuscript book belonging to Edward III’s granddaughter, Philippa de Vere, countess of Oxford, duchess of Ireland in order to look at women’s participation in the borderless francophone culture of late medieval England and at the cultural dimensions of texts inadequately categorized as simply pious reading. As well as showing common interests between lay and religious women across the estates of marriage, widowhood and professed religion, Philippa’s book dissolves boundaries between pious reading and the genres we categorize as secular. Philippa de Vere herself is best known as the scandalously abandoned wife of Robert de Vere, ninth earl of Oxford (1362–1392) and (thanks to de Vere’s position as Richard II’s favourite) duke of Ireland (from 1386).
