The Cambridge Companion
to Medieval Women's Writing. Edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xix + 289. $60.00 (cloth);
$22.00 (paper).
The book provides an original and fresh mapping of the territory it examines,
and this is one of its central accomplishments. Its first section, for
instance, includes essays on the traditional three female estates—virgin,
widow, and wife—but then adds two contributions on aspects of particular
current interest: female childhood and connections among women. The book's
second section treats female authorship, enclosure, women in the home,
and women as members of the church. (Each of these four topics has evoked
stimulating recent work, and the editors' ability to identify such areas
makes this section perhaps the book's most immediately intriguing.) The
final portion offers essays on individual women, plus discussions of women
in lyrics and romances and the influence of continental women mystics.
Such a schema offers the stimulus of the new as well as the resonance
of the familiar. We might wonder, however, why there is no treatment of
Anglo-Norman literature with its particular strong connections to female
reading and writing.The book provides an original and fresh mapping of
the territory it examines, and this is one of its central accomplishments.
Its first section, for instance, includes essays on the traditional three
female estates—virgin, widow, and wife—but then adds two contributions
on aspects of particular current interest: female childhood and connections
among women. The book's second section treats female authorship, enclosure,
women in the home, and women as members of the church. (Each of these
four topics has evoked stimulating recent work, and the editors' ability
to identify such areas makes this section perhaps the book's most immediately
intriguing.) The final portion offers essays on individual women, plus
discussions of women in lyrics and romances and the influence of continental
women mystics. Such a schema offers the stimulus of the new as well as
the resonance of the familiar. We might wonder, however, why there is
no treatment of Anglo-Norman literature with its particular strong connections
to female reading and writing.
Mary C. Erler
Fordham University |
|
