The creative imagination of a single author is really very unhelpful. The romantic idea of great literary works produced by I think it is very limiting to talk just about female authorship. Kinds of evidence do we have for female authorship from this period? Used in the same sentence! In addition to letters like Leoba’s, then, what I suspect many folks today aren’t used to hearing the terms “nun” and “ambitious” Together, these texts allĬontribute to our picture of her as an erudite and powerful woman. On the testimonies of the nuns in Leoba’s community. Spiritual biography-of Leoba, written by the monk Rudolf of Fulda, which drew But we do have letters written to herĪfter she had established herself in Francia. Boniface clearly saw her potential and set out toĪny other letters from Leoba to Boniface. The benefit of Boniface’s patronage there would be greater opportunities for The limitations of her position as a nun in England and recognized that with In the letter, she also conveys her intellectualįrustration and her desire to progress further. Leoba also mentions the education that she has already received, and the poem They actually show-quite clearly-Leoba’s rhetorical skill. These lines are often dismissed as “derivative” of the poetry of bishop and scholar Aldhelm (c. From ‘ A letter from Lioba/Leobgytha/Leoba, abbess of Tauberbischofsheim (c.732)’ May preserve you forever in perennial right. The perpetual fire by which the glory of Christ reigns, He who shines in splendor forever in His Father’s kingdom, The omnipotent Ruler who alone created everything, That we know to have been written by an English woman.
That initial letter from Leoba is short, but it is significant. The two of them worked closely together, even hoping to beīuried together. Boniface then invited her to join his mission to convert Francia Boniface, asking for his protectionĪnd support. South-west England] she wrote to her kinsman, St. Life, when Leoba was a nun at Wimborne, [in Key locations discussed in the “Women’s Literary Culture Before the Conquest” project, © Diane Watt. She was an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon missionary and abbess of Tauberbischofsheim in Francia. You tell us about one of the woman writers you’re researching?ĭiane: Well, the best-known of them is possibly Leoba. Diane is currently undertaking a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust called “ Women’s Literary Culture Before the Conquest.” I set out to learn what light her project will shed on this important subject.ĭiane Watt, Leverhulme Major Research Fellow and Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Surrey. To know about them all, and I want to share that knowledge with every person IĪnd so, I interviewed Diane Watt, professor of medieval literature at the University of Surrey. To the margins of this literary canon, there’s simply no turning back. Once you hear about the fascinating women pushed While elite, aristocratic and ecclesiastical men certainlyĭominated literary culture during the early medieval period, they were in no
These are almost always assumed to have been Is on the Old English poetry produced alongside Latin works in this period.īecause of the way this poetry survives (in far too few manuscripts), Iĭeal mainly with anonymous texts. But I think it can be partly chalked up to the fact that most women writing in this period were using Latin.
I myself didn’t know the name of a single female writer from my field of study-early medieval (or Anglo-Saxon) England, from roughly CE 600–1100-until my PhD was well underway.
There were women writers in the Middle Ages.
Middle english writing series#
You can find the rest of the series here. This is Part 13 of The Public Medievalist’s special series: Gender, Sexism, and the Middle Ages, by Megan Cavell.
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