Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook: A Sourcebook

by Carolyne Larrington

Carolyne Larrington has gathered together a uniquely comprehensive collection of writing by, for and about medieval women, spanning one thousand years and Europe from Iceland to Byzantiu. The extracts are arranged thematically, dealing with the central areas of medieval women's lives and their relation to social and cultural institutions. Each section is contextualised with a brief historical introduction, and the materials span literary, historical, theological and other narrative and imaginative writing. The writings here uncover and confound the stereotype of the medieval woman as lady or virgin by demonstrating the different roles and meanings that the sign of woman occupied in the imaginative space of the medieval period. Larrington's clear and accessible editorial material and the modern English translations of all the extracts mean this work is ideally suited for students. Women and Writing in Early A Sourcebook also contains an extensive and fully up-to-date bibliography, making it not only essential reading for undergraduates and post graduates but also a valuable tool for scholars.

Genres: Medieval, History, Nonfiction, Poetry

292 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 1995

About the author

Carolyne Larrington is a Tutorial Fellow in English at St. John's College, Oxford.

Dr. Carolyne Larrington teaches medieval English literature in the college, ranging from the earliest Old English to the beginning of the Renaissance period.

Dr Larrington's research interests are in Old Icelandic literature, medieval women's writing, European Arthurian literature, and, most recently, medieval emotion. She has published on Old English and Old Icelandic wisdom poetry, compiled Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook and edited two collections of essays on the Old Norse Poetic Edda. Her revised and expanded translation of the Poetic Edda, just published, is the standard. Her most recent monograph is King Arthur's Enchantresses: Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition which appeared from IB Tauris in June 2006. Her book on sibling relations in European medieval literature, and a new popular book on British folklore, The Land of the Green Man will be published in 2015; a BBC Radio 4 series based on the folklore book has also been commissioned. She is currently editing a collection of essays on emotion in Arthurian literature, and a Handbook to Eddic Poetry. She has been until recently editor-in-chief of the journal Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, and the President of the Viking Society for Northern Research, the British scholarly society for Old Norse study.

(from https://www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/945-714/Dr-C...)

Reviews

[Petra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is an excellent start point for someone who wants to know more about women in Medieval Europe. The truth is that even though Europe was very male dominated, this source book still showed that there were some exceptions. This was a very good basis for my thesis reading as it had excellent amount of sources written by Medieval women. I will be sure picking up something else by Larrington in the future.

[Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of extant written works, sorted into categories like 'marriage' or 'work' and then presented chronologically.

I like the idea, but there were a few things that made the book difficult for me to enjoy. For instance, many of the excerpts are not dated, or you are told 'for the description of this, go to the previous excerpt'. It's good that the editor provides the date of the publication she is taking her excerpt from, but I always crave a sense of the date of a piece, even if it's "our best guess is late 10th century."

Also, having read "Treasure of the City of Ladies" and "The Women Troubadours" - I found I had read at least three quarters of the material already. And I found the introductory background material to be too broad for my tastes.

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of texts that do a great job refuting the idea according to which women have not achieved much throughout history. Here we hear of women writers, women poets, women rulers, women workers (who were inevitably paid less than their male counterparts- some things never change) and other real or mythical figures that have been forgotten or intentionally swept aside.