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Bijns, Anna

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The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages

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Abstract

Though largely unknown to anglophone readers, Anna Bijns is recognized as one of the most important writers to publish in Dutch in the sixteenth century. Renowned during her lifetime for her significant poetic skill and strong opposition to Protestantism, her first published book of poetry is also one of the earliest printed polemics against Luther in the Netherlands. Her surviving poems address a variety of themes including love, theology, misogyny, classical and humanistic literature, and sixteenth-century politics. In addition to her three printed poetry albums (1528, 1548, and 1567) which were also issued in Latin translations, hundreds of additional poems survive only in manuscript.

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References and Further Reading

  • Aercke, K. 1987. Anna Bijns: Germanic Sappho. In Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. K. Wilson. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

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  • Kessler, J. 2011. ‘Please do not mind the crudeness of its weave’: Literature, Gender and the Polemic Authority of Anna Bijns. In Literary Cultures and Public Opinion in the Low Countries, 1450–1650, ed. J. Bloemendal, A. van Dixhoorn, and E. Streitman. Leiden: Brill.

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  • Pleij, H. 2013. Meer zuurs dan zoets. Amsterdam: Prometheus.

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  • Pollmann, J. 2007. “Each should tend his own garden”: Anna Bijns and the Catholic polemic against the Reformation. Church History and Religious Culture 87 (1): 29–45.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    Rabia Gregory

Authors
  1. Rabia Gregory
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Correspondence to Rabia Gregory .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA

    Michelle M. Sauer

  2. School of Literature & Languages, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

    Diane Watt

  3. College of Arts & Humanities, Swansea University, Mumbles Swansea, UK

    Liz Herbert McAvoy

Section Editor information

  1. University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

    Amy Louise Morgan

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Gregory, R. (2023). Bijns, Anna. In: Sauer, M.M., Watt, D., McAvoy, L.H. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_109-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_109-1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-76219-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-76219-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

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