Description
Book SynopsisWomen's Lives presents essays on the ways in which the lives and voices of women permeated medieval literature and culture. The ubiquity of women amongst the medieval canon provides an opportunity for considering a different sphere of medieval culture and power that is frequently not given the attention it requires. The reception and use of female figures from this period has proven influential as subjects in literary, political, and social writings; the lives of medieval women may be read as models of positive transgression, and their representation and reception make powerful arguments for equality, agency and authority on behalf of the writers who employed them. The volume includes essays on well-known medieval women, such as Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Cartagena, as well as women less-known to scholars of the European Middle Ages, such as Al-K?hina and Liang Hongyu. Each essay is directly related to the work of Elizabeth Petroff, a scholar of Medieval Women Mystics who helped recover texts written by medieval women.
Table of ContentsIllustrations Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction Nahir I. Otano Gracia and Daniel Armenti I Elizabeth Petroff and Mysticism 1 Women and Mysticism in the Medieval World Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff 2 Male Confessors and Female Penitents: Possibilities for Dialogue Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff II Self-Representation 3 The Empowerment of Teresa de Cartagena through Her Patroness Juana de Mendoza Borja de Cossio 4 Hildegardian Remixes: Hildegard von Bingen and the Appropriation of Auctoritas Andres Amitai Wilson 5 Language and Trance Theatre Rebeca Sanmartin Bastida III Reception 6 Smuggled Balsam and the Inscription of Memory: Hugeberc von Hildesheim and the Pilgrimage of Saint Willibald Susan Signe Morrison 7 Gender, Genre and Collaboration in the Life of Ida of Nivelles Barbara Zimbalist 8 History Meets Literary Imagination: The Making of a Twelfth-Century Woman Warrior Lan Dong 9 A Woman Mystic in Pre-Islamic North Africa: Al Kahina in the Futuh Misr Denise K. Filios IV Appropriation 10 When Romance and Hagiography Meet: Inventing Saintly Women in The South English Legendary Meriem Pages 11 Selfless Acts of Salvation as Self-Glorification: Saving the Prostitute in Hrotsvith's Plays Madalina Meirosu 12 Liturgy and the Performance of the Mystical Self Claire Taylor Jones
