Feminist-Medievalist Editorial Practice and the Early English Text Society

Abstract

In two parers prepared for the for Medieval Feminist Scholarship sessions at Kalamazoo, for a roundtable discussion of The Future of Medieval Feminist Studies (1999), and for a session on Feminist-Medievalists Revisit the Earll English Text Society (2000), argued for more rigorous archival training for medievalist graduate students and for feminist editing of medieval texts, since what is at stake is how we understand and transmit the language, literature, and history of the period-what lens we fashion through which our students see the Middle Ages. Many of us have observed the marginalization of the study ofearly periods in our universities, and the trimming of our medieval course offerings, along with some colleagues finding editing or archival work secretarial and not grounded enough in critical theory.' Thus, the recent (jan. 2005) spate of pleas on medfem-I for more paleography seminars and more graduate school experience with archival research was a welcome call to reevaluate whitt our legacy should be to our students ana future colleagues. From my perspective in medieval English, a major archival duty of scholars involves transmitting the k n . texts, wor s, wntings, Iiterature-whatever nomenclature we favor for