COURSE SYLLABUS
Medieval Origins of Literature Written By and For Women
This syllabus was developed and is currently taught by Klára Petříková at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague.
Course Description
Lives of medieval women are often underrepresented in traditional history books, which tend to focus on the deeds of powerful and influential men. This lecture series aims to explore medieval women’s life experiences within their historical, social, and cultural contexts, with particular attention to the diverse roles women played in medieval society and the strategies they used when they negotiated power and authority in a world where their opportunities were often shaped and limited by misogynistic attitudes. These roles are examined through a selection of representative texts, written both by and for women, including devotional texts and spiritual guides, conduct literature, romances, poems by troubadours and trobairitz, and texts that respond to and challenge deeply rooted misogynistic ideas of the time. Drawing especially on texts from medieval England and France – two closely interconnected literary culture, particularly after the Norman Conquest – the course explores how literature both reflected and shaped contemporary ideas about women, gender, and authority, and shows that, despite the constraints placed upon them, medieval women were often not passive, powerless figures, but were able to exercise influence, articulate their experiences and shape the cultural and literary traditions in which they participated.
Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course, the students will be able to:
Course Requirements
The course is completed for a grade. The final grade is based on:
- Attendance and preparation (20% of the final grade): the students are expected to read the assigned texts and actively contribute to class discussion
- Presentation (20% of the final grade): students are encouraged to give a 10-15 minute presentation based on the secondary reading assigned for each class. The presentation should summarise main arguments of the text and raise questions for a discussion.
- Written text analysis (60% of the final grade): in class, students analyse a short passage from a medieval text, commenting on its socio-historical and literary context, language or imagery, and the position of the female speaker or character within the text, drawing on the knowledge they have acquired throughout the semester.
COURSE SCHEDULE
Week 1 How were women perceived in the Middle Ages?
The first lecture explores medieval ideas about the nature of women and femininity. It examines theological interpretations of the Biblical creation story, which presented women as subordinate to men, as well as medieval medical theories that described the female body as imperfect in comparison to the male body. The lecture also discusses the association of women with the body, sexuality, and sin in medieval religious and literary texts, including Ancrene Wisse and its use of tropes associated with traditional female vices. At the same time, it introduces students to the use of feminine imagery in devotional images and texts, as well as to more positive models of femininity, such as the Virgin Mary, female saints, and the concepts of the virgo and the virago. Finally, the lecture considers how religious life could offer women opportunities for education and a degree of authority and independence.
Primary literature:
- excerpts from Ancrene Wisse (tropes of traditional female vices)
Millett, B. (2009): Ancrene Wisse, A Translation, University of Exeter Press, pp. 23-25; 30; 76.
Secondary literature:
recommended reading:
Bloch, R. H. (1991): Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love, University of Chicago Press, pp. 65-91.
Robertson, E. (1993): „Medieval Medical Views of Women and Female Spirituality in the Ancrene Wisse and Julian of Norwich’s Showings“ in Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature, ed. by L. Lomperis, S. Stanbury, Philadelphia, pp. 142-167.
Week 2 Women, Marriage, and Religious Life in the Middle Ages
This lecture examines the social roles available to women in medieval society, focusing on the life-stage model that divided women into virgins, wives, and widows. It explores the religious ideal of virginity and the opportunities and limitations of religious life, including convents, anchoritic life, and beguine communities. The lecture then examines medieval marriage as a social, economic, and religious institution, including dowry, the nature of exchanged vowed, clandestine marriages, and Church law. Using extracts from conduct literature, attention is paid to marital authority and domestic expectations. The lecture further explores medieval ideas about subordination and love within marriage through literary and historical sources, including extracts from conduct literature, and the letters of Heloïse and Abelard. The session highlights the gap between religious ideals, social practice, and literary representations of marriage and love.
Primary literature:
- excerpts from Holy Maidenhood
Savage, A., Watson, N. (1991): Anchoritic Spirituality, Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works, Paulist Press, pp. 234-239.
- Letter from Margaret Paston to John Paston II, 1469 (10 or 11 September)
Barratt, A. (2010): Women’s Writing in Middle English, Pearson Education Limited, pp. 264-268.
- excerpts from Le Ménagier de Paris [The Good Wife’s Guide] (The story of patient Griselda; The Care of the Husband’s Person)
Greco, G. L., Rose, Ch. M. (2009): Le Ménagier de Paris, A Medieval Household Book, Cornell University Press, pp. 102; 105-119; 138-141.
- excerpts from the letters of Heloïse and Abélard
McLaughlin, M. M., Wheeler, B. (2009): The Letters of Heloïse and Abélard, Palgrave, Macmillan, pp. 23-24, 26-27; 53-54; 67-68.
Secondary literature:
required reading:
Elliott, D. (2003): “Marriage” in Dinshaw, C., Wallace, D., eds. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, Cambridge University Press, pp. 40-57.
recommended reading:
Shulamith, S. (1983): The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages, Routledge, pp. 67-129.
Week 3 Medieval Women’s Literacy, Education, Book Ownership, and Patronage
This lecture examines what it meant for a woman to be literate in the Middle Ages and explores the various ways in which women participated in medieval textual culture despite significant institutional limitations. It begins by considering the medieval concept of literacy, which was closely associated with knowledge of Latin and therefore with scholarship, and discusses the limited but important opportunities for women to acquire education, especially in convents and noble households via private tutors.
The lecture then turns to the growing importance of vernacular literacy among laywomen, the use of devotional literature in elementary education, and the role of mothers in the early education of children. It also examines the kinds of books women most often owned and read – primarily psalters, primers, and Books of Hours – and considers how these books functioned not only as devotional objects but also as tools of education, memory, and personal identity. Finally, the lecture explores the role of women as patrons, commissioners, and transmitters of books and literary works, showing that aristocratic and noble women played an important role in the production and circulation of medieval literature and in shaping literary culture.
Primary literature:
Otter, M. (2004): Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, The Book of Encouragement and Consolation [Liber Confortatorius], D. S. Brewer, pp. 94-96.
- excerpts from The Book of the City of Ladies
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, R., ed. (1997): The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, W. W. Norton and Company, pp. 136-140, 147-149.
Larrington, C. (1995) Women and Writing in Medieval Europe, Routledge, pp. 209-210.
Secondary literature:
required reading:
Farina, L. (2012): “Women and Reading” in McAvoy, L. H., Watt, D. The History of British Women’s Writing 700-1500, Palgrave: Macmillan, pp. 142-150.
recommended reading:
Bell, S. G. (1982): “Medieval Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture“, Signs, Summer, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 742-768.
Meale, C. M. (1996): “... alle the bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch”: laywomen and their books in later medieval England” in Meale, C. M., ed., Women and Literature in Britain 1150-1500, Cambridge University Press, pp. 128-158.
Week 4 Roles of Women in Medieval Society: Motherhood, Work, Power (Part 1)
This lecture explores the range of roles medieval women could occupy in society. It begins with the role of women as mothers, examining both the central importance of fertility and childbirth in medieval society and the dangers that accompanied pregnancy, labour, and infant care. The lecture considers medieval childbirth rituals, charms, and devotional practices, as well as changing historiographical views on parental affection, asking whether medieval mothers were indeed emotionally distant from their children, as some earlier scholars claimed, or whether the sources instead reveal strong bonds of care, grief, and tenderness.
The lecture then turns to women’s work and shows that medieval women participated in a wide range of economic activities. Women worked as agricultural labourers, servants, brewers, spinners, textile workers, healers, midwives, traders, and widows managing family businesses. Their work was often centred on the household, yet this domestic sphere was itself economically productive and socially important. Special attention is paid to occupations traditionally associated with women, such as brewing, spinning, textile production, childcare, and medical care, as well as to the ways in which women’s access to work could expand or contract in response to broader historical change.
Primary literature:
- a selection of early medieval pregnancy charms
Larrington, C. (1995): Women and Writing in Medieval Europe, Routledge, pp. 93-94.
- excerpts from Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Divine Love (Christ as mother motif)
Windeatt, B. (2015): Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love, Oxford University Press, pp. 130-133.
- excerpts from The Book of Margery Kempe (business enterprises of a medieval townwife)
Windeatt, B. (1985): The Book of Margery Kempe, Penguin Books, pp. 44-45.
- excerpts from Trotula
Green, M. H. (2001): The Trotula, A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 95-97; 143-145.
Secondary literature:
required reading:
Salih, S. (2006): “At home; out of the house” in Dinshaw, C., Wallace, D., eds. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, Cambridge University Press, pp. 124-141.
recommended reading:
Leyser, H. (1995): Medieval Women, A Social History of Women in England 450-1500, St. Martin’s Press, pp. 142-168.
Rees Jones, S. (2013): “Public and Private Space and Gender in Medieval Europe” in Bennett, J., Karras, R., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford University Press, pp. 246-261.
Week 5 Roles of Women in Medieval Society: Motherhood, Work, Power (Part 2)
The lecture examines the circumstances in which medieval women could exercise power. Although medieval political and legal thought insisted on female subordination, aristocratic and royal women often ruled lands, managed estates, defended property, acted as regents, negotiated peace, and exercised influence at court. The lecture also considers forms of female authority that fell outside orthodox structures, including women’s participation in heretical movements, the appeal such movements held for women, and the changing association of women with magic and witchcraft at the end of the Middle Ages. In doing so, the lecture highlights both the possibilities open to women and the anxieties their agency could provoke.
Primary literature
- Paston Letters, no 26: Margaret Paston to John Paston I (women defending family property)
Amt, E. (2010): Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe, Routledge, p. 143-144
- excerpt from Christine de Pizan’s The Book of Three Virtues (women as peacemakers)
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, R., ed. (1997): The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, W. W. Norton and Company, pp.163-164.
Secondary literature
required reading:
Fössel, A. (2013): “The Political Traditions of Female Rulership in Medieval Europe”, in Bennett, J., Karras, R., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford University Press, pp. 68-83.
recommended reading:
Arnold, J. H. (2013): “Heresy and Gender in the Middle Ages”, in in Bennett, J., Karras, R., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford University Press, pp. 496-510.
Drell, J. (2013): “Aristocratic Economies: Women and Family”, in Bennett, J., Karras, R., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford University Press, pp. 327-343.
Newman, B. (2005): „The Heretic Saint: Guglielma of Bohemia, Milan and Brunate, Church History, Vol. 74, Vol. 1, pp. 1-38.
Week 6 Women, Authority, Authorship and Textual Strategies
This lecture examines the medieval concept of authorship and asks what it meant to be an “author” in a period when the term auctor referred not simply to a writer, but to a figure of intellectual and moral authority whose work conveyed truth worthy of study and imitation. Because authority in the Middle Ages was closely associated with male learning and the Latin language, women who wished to produce texts of their own had to navigate a culture that viewed female authorship as inherently problematic and potentially dangerous. The lecture therefore explores the strategies that enabled women to participate in textual culture without openly challenging male authority. Particular attention is paid to forms of authorship that were considered acceptable for women, especially compiling, translating, and visionary writing. These strategies are examined through the works of Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe, and the lecture also considers the extent and importance of role played by scribes, confessors, and spiritual advisors in shaping and authorizing women’s texts.
Primary literature:
- Marie de France’s Prologue to her lais
Burgess, G. S., Busby, K. (1986): The Lais of Marie de France, Penguin Books, p. 42.
- excerpts from the Life of St. Catherine translated by Clemence of Barking (Catherine’s debate with the philosophers)
Jocelyn Wogan Browne, Glyn Burgess (1996): Virgin Lives and Holy Deaths: Two Exemplary Biographies for Anglo-Norman Women, Everyman’s Library, pp. 8-20.
- excerpts from Juliana Berner’s Book of Hunting
Barratt, A., ed. (2010): Women’s Writing in Middle English, Longman, pp. 249-254.
- excerpt from Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love (anxiety about a woman authoring a text)
Windeatt, B. (2015): Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love, Oxford University Press, p. 10.
- excerpts from the Book of Margery Kempe (Margery and all her scribes; Margery visits Julian of Norwich):
Windeatt, B. (1985): The Book of Margery Kempe, Penguin Books, pp. 35-37, 77-79.
Secondary literature:
required reading:
Summit, J. (2003): “Women and authorship”, in Dinshaw, C, Wallace, D., eds., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, Cambridge University Press, pp. 91-108.
recommended reading:
Barratt, A. (2012): “Women Translators” in McAvoy, L. H., Watt, D. The History of British Women’s Writing 700-1500, Palgrave: Macmillan, pp. 169-177.
Johnson, L. S. (1991): “The Trope of the Scribe and the Question of Literary Authority in the Works of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe“, Speculum, vol. 66, no. 4, pp. 820-838.
Week 7 Julian of Norwich
This class focuses on Julian of Norwich, the second of the only two known female authors writing in Middle English and examines the distinctive ways in which her text articulates female spiritual authority within a culture deeply suspicious of women’s theological speech. It asks in what sense Julian may be understood as a proto-feminist figure and considers how her text subtly challenges orthodox assumptions about sin, divine judgement, the female body, and women’s relation to authority. The lecture introduces the historical Julian as far as the sparse evidence allows; it then turns to the two versions of her text, the Short Text and the Long Text, and follows the interpretive process through which Julian came to understand the central meaning of her revelations: that love is the principle through which God creates, sustains, and ultimately restores all things. Particular attention is paid to Julian’s theological originality, especially her understanding of sin, refusal to imagine God as wrathful, her subtle challenge to misogynistic readings of Eve and female embodiment, and her famous maternal imagery, in which Christ is figured as mother and the divine is understood in terms that encompass both male and female principles. The lecture also situates Julian within the wider context of anchoritism. It examines the enclosed life as both material constraint and spiritual opportunity: a life of bodily restriction that paradoxically creates inner freedom, authority, and intellectual depth. In doing so, the lecture asks how the anchorhold functioned not only as a place of renunciation, but also as a site from which a woman might speak with unusual force, subtlety, and spiritual authority.
Primary literature:
- excerpts from Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love
Windeatt, B. (2015): Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love, Oxford University Press, pp. 9-10; 14-15; 49; 98; 125-126; 129 132-133; 164-165
Secondary literature:
required reading:
Soskice, J. M. (2007): The Kindness of God, Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language, Oxford University Press, pp. 125-156.
recommended reading:
Mulder-Bakker, A. B. (2005): Lives of the Anchoresses, The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 1-23.
Week 8 Margery Kempe
This lecture introduces Margery Kempe, author of what is often considered the first autobiography in English. Born into a wealthy merchant family in King’s Lynn, Margery lived a life that defied almost every social expectation placed upon a woman of her time. Instead of remaining within the traditional roles of wife and mother, she negotiated a chaste marriage, travelled extensively on pilgrimages across Europe and the Holy Land, spoke publicly about her religious experiences, and dictated the story of her life to scribes so that it might be recorded and remembered. The lecture explores Margery as a difficult and ambiguous figure who resists easy classification. Although she is often grouped with medieval mystics such as Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and Julian of Norwich, her book differs markedly from other mystical writings of the period. Whereas most mystical texts focus on theological reflection or spiritual instruction, Margery’s book is intensely personal, filled with everyday detail, bodily experience, emotional outbursts, social conflict, and constant negotiation with authority. For this reason, her work has often been described not simply as autobiography, but as auto-hagiography — the life of a would-be saint written by herself. Particular attention is paid to Margery’s emotional devotion, especially her famous fits of uncontrollable weeping, which became both the source of ridicule and the source of her spiritual authority. Her tears, understood as a gift from God and a sign of divine grace, functioned as a form of religious identity and as a means of distinguishing her from others. The lecture places this emotional spirituality within the wider tradition of affective devotion, which encouraged believers to meditate on Christ’s humanity and suffering and to respond with compassion, love, and emotional identification.
Primary literature:
- excerpts from The Book of Margery Kempe
Windeatt, B. (1985): The Book of Margery Kempe, Penguin Books, pp. 43-44; 53-54; 56; 68-69; 97; 105-107; 126; 184; 221; 281
Secondary literature:
required reading:
Mahoney, D. B. (1992): “Voice, Authority and Blasphemy in The Book of Margery Kempe” in McEntire, S. J., ed., Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays, Garland Publishing, pp. 93-115.
recommended reading:
Armstrong, E. P. (1992): “Understanding by Feeling in Margery Kempe’s Book” in McEntire, S. J., ed., Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays, Garland Publishing, pp. 17-36.
Week 9 Courtly Love
This lecture introduces the concept of courtly love and examines its emergence in the literary culture of twelfth-century France, especially in the lyric poetry of the troubadours and later in medieval romance. Although “courtly love” is a modern term, medieval texts themselves often refer to fin amor, refined or noble love, and the lecture explores the values, conventions, and contradictions associated with this ideal. It considers the troubadours as poets and composers writing in Occitan for aristocratic courts, and analyses the characteristic features of courtly love: the idealization of the beloved lady, the lover’s humility and suffering, the language of feudal service, the tension between sensual desire and spiritual refinement, and the representation of love as both ennobling and destructive. Particular attention is paid to the paradoxical nature of courtly love. In many texts, love is directed toward a married noblewoman and is therefore illicit, extra-marital, and potentially subversive of both Christian morality and feudal loyalty. On the example of Chrétien de Troyes’ romance Lancelot or The Knight of the Cart, the lecture considers the major scholarly debates surrounding courtly love: whether it should be understood as a genuine social ideal, a literary game, a form of aristocratic fantasy, an ironic construct, or a response to tensions between desire and social regulation. The lecture then turns to the female reception of courtly discourse by examining the surviving poems of the trobairitz, women troubadours who adapt, imitate, and at times subvert the rhetoric of fin amor. Their lyrics reveal significant shifts in tone, agency, and perspective, and open up questions about female desire, gendered voice, and the possibilities and limits of women’s participation in courtly literary culture.
Primary literature
- extracts from the troubadour poems (Cercamon, Marcabru)
Kehew, R., ed. (2005): The Lark in the Morning, The Verses of the Troubadours, The University of Chicago Press, pp. 37-39; 60-65
- the rules of love from Andreas Capellanus’s The Art of Courtly Love
Parry, J. J. (1960): The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus, Columbia University Press, pp. 177-186.
- extracts from the romance The Knight of the Cart by Chrétien de Troyes
Staines, D. (1990): The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes, Indiana University Press, pp. 173-174; 186-188; 215-223.
- extracts from the poems by trobairitz (Countess de Dia, lady Lombarda in dialogue with Bernart Arnaut d’Armagnac)
Bruckner, M. T., Shepard, L., White, S. (2000): Songs of the Women Troubadours, Garland Publishing 5-8; 63-65.
Secondary literature
required reading:
Kay, S. (2000): “Courts, Clerks, and Courtly Love” in Krueger, R. L., ed., Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, Cambridge University Press, pp. 81-96.
recommended reading:
O’Donoghue, B. (2006): “The Reality of Courtly Love” in Cooney, H., ed., Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages, Palgrave, Macmillan, pp. 7-24.
Ferrante, J. M. (2016): “Notes Toward the Study of a Female Rhetoric in the Trobairitz” in Paden, W. D., ed., The Voice of the Trobairitz, Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 63-72.
Week 10 Challenging Courtly Love: Women, Agency, and Gender Roles in Medieval Romance
This lecture examines medieval literary reactions to courtly love, focusing on texts in which female characters and female authors challenge courtly love tropes and reinterpret traditional models of femininity which present women as idealized, passive figures with little agency. It therefore explores literary traditions in which women assume more active roles and in which gender roles become unstable, reversible, or open to reinterpretation. Attention is paid to Anglo-Norman romances, where we encounter the figure of the “wooing woman,” a noble lady who actively chooses her husband and openly declares her love, reversing the usual gender roles of courtly literature. The lecture also examines the figure of temptress through the example of lady Bertilac in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight whose role is to test the knight’s moral integrity. The lecture then turns to romances involving cross-dressing and gender disguise, especially Roman de Silence, a text that explores whether gender is determined by nature or by upbringing, education, and social performance. Through the story of a girl raised as a boy who becomes a successful knight, the romance raises fundamental questions about gender identity, social roles, and the relationship between biological sex and cultural expectations. The lecture also situates such narratives within a broader medieval context by discussing cross-dressing in religious texts, historical cases of gender disguise, and figures such as Joan of Arc and Christine de Pizan, whose writings engage directly with questions of female authority, gender roles, and women’s place in society.
Primary literature
- Marie de France, Laüstic (a critique of courtly love conventions)
Burgess, G. S., Busby, K. (1986): The Lais of Marie de France, Penguin Books, pp. 94-96.
- excerpt from Sir Bevis of Hampton
Herzman, R. B., Salisbury, E., Drake, G. (1999): Four Romances of England: King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton, Athelston, Medieval Institute Publications, Kalamazoo, pp. 189-192.
- excerpt from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Borroff, M. (1967), Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, W. W. Norton & Company, pp. 25-42.
- excerpts from Roman de Silence
Roche-Mahdi, S. (2007): A thirteenth-century French romance Silence, Michigan State University Press, p. 117-125; 241; 243; 313.
- Christine de Pizan, from The Book of Fortune’s Transformation
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, R., ed. (1997): The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, W. W. Norton and Company, pp. 90-91.
Secondary literature:
required reading:
Krueger, R. (2000): Questions of gender in Old French Courtly Romance, in Krueger, R. L., ed., Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, Cambridge University Press, pp. 132-149.
recommended reading:
Weiss, J. (1996): “The power and weakness of women in Anglo-Norman romance” in Meale, C. M., ed., Women and Literature in Britain 1150-1500, Cambridge University Press, pp. 7-23.
Week 11 Women defended
This lecture introduces The Romance of the Rose, one of the most widely copied vernacular texts of the later Middle Ages, but also one of the most influential storehouses of antifeminist commonplaces. It examines Christine de Pizan’s response to its misogyny and her role in what later came to be known as the querelle des femmes. Discussion then turns to the literary debate provoked by the poem in the early fifteenth century, when Christine de Pizan openly challenged its admirers and took it upon herself to defend women against slander and abusive generalization. In doing so, she raised questions that were not only literary but also moral and social: whether obscene language belongs in literature, whether authors are responsible for the views voiced by their characters, and whether literature can shape behaviour and reinforce harmful attitudes. The lecture also considers Christine’s broader defence of women, culminating in The Book of the City of Ladies, where she constructs an alternative moral and historical tradition founded on exemplary women from Scripture, history, myth, and contemporary life. It asks in what sense Christine may be called a proto-feminist and where the limits of that label lie. While she powerfully defends women’s rationality, dignity, and moral worth, she does not demand social equality in the modern sense, but instead works within the ethical and rhetorical framework of her own age. The lecture concludes by placing Christine within a wider medieval tradition of defending women, including earlier male authors and the English literary context, most notably Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, whose voice offers another complex response to clerical misogyny and marital authority.
Primary literature:
- extracts from The Romance of the Rose
Horgan, F. (1994): The Romance of the Rose, Oxford University Press, pp. 133-134; 140-144.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue
Benson, L. D. (1987), The Riverside Chaucer, Oxford University Press, pp. 105-116
- extracts from Christine de Pizan’s letter to Jean de Montreuil
Hult, D. F. (2010): Debate of the Romance of the Rose, The University of Chicago Press, pp. 50-58.
- Christine de Pizan, extracts from The Book of the City of Ladies
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, R., ed. (1997): The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, W. W. Norton and Company 119-120, 124-126, 153-155.
Secondary literature:
required reading:
Hult, D. F. (2003): “The Roman de la Rose, Christine de Pizan and the querelle des femmes” in Dinshaw, C., Wallace, D., eds., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, Cambridge University Press, pp. 184-194.
recommended reading:
Blamires, A. (1997) The Case for Women in Medieval Culture, Oxford University Press, pp. 126-152.
Brown-Grant, R. (1999) Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women, Cambridge University Press, pp. 7-51; 128-274.
Roberta Krueger (2013): “Towards Feminism: Christine De Pizan, Female Advocacy, and Women’s Textual Communities in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond” in Bennett, J., Karras, R., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford University Press, pp. 590-606.
Week 12 Conclusion and Final Discussion: Women, Authority, and Literary Voice in the Middle Ages
The final session of the course is devoted to a collective discussion of the major themes explored throughout the lecture series. It revisits key questions concerning women’s roles in medieval society, women’s access to literacy and education, female spirituality and mysticism, the literary construction of gender in courtly love and romance, and medieval debates about women such as the querelle des femmes. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which medieval women negotiated authority — spiritual, textual, social, and moral — within the constraints of a patriarchal society, and to the strategies through which female voices were able to emerge in literature.
The session provides students with an opportunity to reflect on connections between individual texts and broader historical and cultural developments, to compare different models of medieval womanhood presented during the course (the mystic, the patron, the lover, the writer, the cross-dressed heroine, the queen, the wife), and to discuss how medieval literature both reinforced and challenged contemporary gender norms. The class will also serve as a space for questions, revision, and preparation for the final assessment.
Selective bibliography:
Barratt, A. (2010): Women’s Writing in Middle English, Pearson Education Limited.
Bennett, J., Karras, R., eds. (2013): The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford University Press.
Dinshaw, C., Wallace, D., eds. (2003): The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, Cambridge University Press
Leyser, H. (1995): Medieval Women, A Social History of Women in England 450-1500, St. Martin’s Press
McAvoy, L. H., Watt, D. (2012): The History of British Women’s Writing 700-1500, Palgrave: Macmillan
Meale, C. M., ed. (1996): Women and Literature in Britain 1150-1500, Cambridge University Press.
Larrington, C. (1995): Women and Writing in Medieval Europe, Routledge.
Shahar, Shulamith (1983): The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages, Routledge.
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