Medieval Women in their Communities ed. by Diane Watt (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS103 an invention of the nineteenth centuty' (135), for example, needs considerably more nuance in light ofJames Paxson's recent work on personification. Neither is her claim quite as large as her main title implies: she applies her findings to classical auctores exclusively, with no mention ofvernacular reading and little treatment of Scriptural interpretation. That Reynolds's findings are less revolutionary than she implies, however, does not mean that they arc without value. What is genuinely new and interesting in her book is the discovery, in this group ofpreviously under-examined glosses, ofa twelfthcentury pedagogical basis for literal reading and for the reader's paradoxical prominence in establishing authorial intention. Linguists will find much of value in her close examination ofthese grammatical practices, while literary historians will at least find new support for some established ideas in this book's final chapters. ROBERT S. STURGES University of New Orleans diane watt, ed., Medieval Women in their Communities. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Pp. 250. isbn: 0-8020-8122-3. $19.95 (paper), isbn: 0-80204289 -9. $50 (cloth). This essay collection, edited by Diane Watt, grew out of the 1995 meeting of the Gender and Medieval Studies Group at Gregynog, the conference center for the University ofWales. The volume is a useful addition to the proliferating studies on women in the Middle Ages and also offers a considerable expansion of the topic initially undertaken in a 1989 issue of Signs, entitled Working Together in the Middle Ages: Perspectives on Women's Communities. Watt's introduction provides an overview ofthe essays and raises a variety ofissues. She examines modern and medieval definitions ofcommunity and acknowledges the importance that modern feminists have tended to place on the issues ofcommunity and the collective identity, but she also challenges Jacob Burckhardt's assertion that medieval people were conscious ofthemselves not as individuals, but 'only as a member ofa race, people, party, family' (7). All in all, she positions the volume well to lead us into the varied discussions and definitions of community contained therein. The first five essays form a more-or-less cohesive group, all examining women's roles within the context ofa variety ofreligious communities—convents, béguinages, and anchorholds. The first three ofthese (Jane Cartwright's 'The Desire to Corrupt: Convent and Community in Medieval Wales'; Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner's 'Puellae litteratae: The Use ofthe Vernacular in the Dominican Convents ofSouthern Germany'; and Rosalynn Voaden's All Girls Together: Community, Gender and Vision at Helfta') underscore a contrast between the small number and lack ofsupport for Welsh convents, as compared to the more affluent and intellectually richer convents in Germany. Cartwright's essay is a provocative look at the rarity ofWelsh nuns, who 'belonged more to the erotica of the imagination, than to any social reality' (39). German nuns, by contrast, as the other two articles demonstrate, were not only more K>4ARTHURIANA prolific but sought to take firmer control oftheir own learning and spirituality through the use ofvernacular texts and mystical discourse among women. The fourth essay, Penelope Galloway's '"Discreet and Devout Maidens": Women's Involvement in Beguine Communities in Northern France, 1200—1500,' is a penetrating study not only ofthe beguine movement itself, but ofthe female patrons who provided support to beguine houses, particularly the countess sisters, Jeanne and Marguerite of Flanders. The final essay in this first group, Susannah Mary Chewning's 'Mysticism and the Anchoritic Community: "ATime. . .ofVeiled Infinity,"' is less focused on anchoresses themselves than on Pe Wohunge ofUre Lauerd, one of the earliest of English mystical texts, which speaks in a feminine voice 'disruptive of established codes of masculine power.' (122) Nevertheless, the article sheds light on the distinctiveness of the anchoritic life and on the issue of female mysticism. The second five articles are far more diverse in their approaches to the issue of community. In fact, the essay by Cynthia Kraman, 'Communities of Otherness in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale,' interesting though it is in its efforts to posit Jewish readings ofthe Song ofSongs as a subtext for the Merchant's Tale, seems somewhat out ofplace in this volume. Despite the obvious effort in the title to connect it to the...