ABSTRACT
In studying the ways that women and scribes are represented in medieval texts, it is essential to consider the nature of the texts themselves. How do the texts’ generic properties determine what gets said, or doesn’t get said, about women and their writing companions? In other words, how does the medium affect the message? As recent scholarship has shown, this question ought to be asked just as often in studies of spiritual writing as it is in studies of secular writing (Hollywood 29; Greenspan 217-21). To conflate broad categories of religious literature-for example, hagiographic and hortatory texts-is to blur distinctions of purpose, place, and style, leading to simplistic conclusions about spirituality and textuality in the Middle Ages. This chapter seeks to develop a more nuanced perspective by distinguishing between the types of texts used most often in this study: treatises, memoirs, and letters. By examining how and why representations of women and scribes vary across genres, the chapter not only offers critical insights into the issue at hand, but also establishes a rhetorical context for subsequent chapters.
