LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY AND DIANE WATT (eds). The History of British Women's Writing, 700-1500.

Abstract

This collection is a noteworthy addition to the bibliography on women’s contributions to medieval literature. The essays gathered here provide a history of major scholarship on women’s writing in the period; examine a broad range of medieval women who, singly or as members of communities, had a hand, or a voice, in writing books; and, most impressively, survey the critical assumptions and methods currently guiding scholarship in the field. McAvoy and Watt’s splendid introduction lays the conceptual ground for the volume by observing that until recently medieval women were neglected by literary histories, even histories of female writers, because these works privilege single, named authors who record personal opinions in original poetry or in fictive prose. But for the Middle Ages, the Latin word auctor meant not just any writer but one with cultural authority, most often God but also a (usually) male writer inspired to relate truths in canonized classical, biblical, or patristic texts. Few medieval books had authors in the modern sense. Instead books were typically written anonymously and collaboratively, and so were considered the collective property of the community that created a text, often for its own consumption. Thus, while women sometimes became named authors—like the well-known Marie de France, Julian of Norwich, or Margery Kempe—they more frequently wrote anonymously or translated the works of others. They also participated in literary production by having their lives recorded in texts; by commissioning books and patronizing writers or institutions; and by buying, reading, and circulating manuscripts.