Women and Networks of Literary Production

Abstract

The period from 1066 to 1500 in medieval Britain is surprisingly rich in women s literature, especially texts written about, for, and by women pursuing a rigorous form of the contemplative life either as solitaries or anchoresses, that is, female recluses who chose to be shut into a room or rooms usually attached to a church in order to devote their lives solely to the contemplation of God. One means of identifying the place of the literature associated with these extraordinary women in literary history is through a study of the material objects most closely linked to them, the manuscripts that, either directly or indirectly, record their voices. A consideration of the manuscripts associated with three prominent pieces of women s literature — the twelfth-century Latin Vita of Christina of Markyate, the thirteenth-century Middle English religious prose guide to the contemplative life known as the Ancrene Wisse [Guide for Anchoresses], and the late fourteenth-century writings of Julian of Norwich — shows us that the production of writing by, about, and for these women in the Middle Ages, in spite of the apparent solitariness of their spiritual enterprise, required networks of support. These networks included those persons who encouraged and materially enabled the contemplative in her choice of life, the authors who wrote for and about them, the scribes who wrote down the words they said, and the monks, friars, secular canons, and antiquarians who preserved and transmitted their literature.