Del i serien SUNY series in Medieval Studies

Discourse of Enclosure

Representing Women in Old English Literature

Häftad, Engelska, 2001

659 kr

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Examines representations of women and femininity in Old English poetry and prose.2001 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Exploring Old English texts ranging from Beowulf to Ælfric's Lives of Saints, this book examines ways that women's monastic, material, and devotional practices in Anglo-Saxon England shaped literary representations of women and femininity. Horner argues that these representations derive from a "discourse" of female monastic enclosure, based on the increasingly strict rules of cloistered confinement that regulated the female religious body in the early Middle Ages. She shows that the female subjects of much Old English literature are enclosed by many layers-literal and figurative, textual, material, discursive, spatial-all of which image and reinforce the powerful institutions imposed by the Church on the female body. Though it has long been recognized that medieval religious women were enclosed, and that virginity was highly valued, this book is the first to consider the interrelationships of these two positions-that is, how the material practices of female monasticism inform the textual operations of Old English literature.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2001-05-24
Mått152 x 229 x 13 mm
Vikt299 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieSUNY series in Medieval Studies
Antal sidor217
FörlagState University of New York Press
ISBN9780791450109

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Acknowledgments Dedication Introduction The Discourse of Enclosure: Inscribing the Feminine in Old English LiteratureChapter One Looking Into Enclosure in the Old English Female LyricsChapter Two Voices From the Margins: Women and Textual Enclosure in BeowulfChapter Three Textual/Sexual Violence: The Old English Juliana and the Anglo-Saxon Female ReaderChapter Four Bodies and Borders: The Hermeneutics ofEnclosure in Ælfric's Lives of Female SaintsConclusion Christina of Markyate and Legacies of EnclosureBibliographyIndex

"This is an important and inventive book. Horner uses a supple argument about the discourse of female enclosure—enclosure in a monastery, enclosure in the body, and enclosure in a text—to link a feminist reading of four Old English works not usually read together: the heroic epic Beowulf, the female-voiced Old English elegies, a verse saint's life, and female portions of the Lives of Saints by Ælfric. The result is an elegant and informative feminist reading of all these works and a developed methodology that sheds light on women's experiences as readers of Old English texts and as subjects within those texts." — Jonathan Wilcox, editor of Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature