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Early English Devotional Prose and the Female Audience

Elizabeth Ann Robertson

出版	Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1990
主題	Literary Criticism / GeneralLiterary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
ISBN	08704964179780870496417
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=0ags85HiBZUC&hl=&source=gbs_api
EBook	SAMPLE

註釋

After the NOrman conquest, women and the lower classes became the primary audiences for English, as opposed to Latin or French, literature. Among the works written for female audiences are the hitherto neglected AB texts: three female saints' lives, a tract on virginity, a homily, and a guide for anchoresses. In this lucid, innovative study, Elizabeth Robertson shows that the AB texts were written in an effective experiential style that distinguished them from other spiritual works of the period.Key characteristics of this special style--nonteleological structre, pervasive use of concrete imagery, and thematic focus on the female body--have been viewed by some as hallmarks of women's writing more generally. Combining feminist theory with critical skill and an impressive command of Old and Middle English materials, the author argues, to the contrary, that in the thirteenth-century England this style was created by educated male writers in accord with their beliefs about nature and needs of marginal social groups.Beginning with the history and motivations of female anchorites and surveying medieval philosophy and theology in relation to gender theory, this book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the AB texts and then details their debt to earlier English vernacular works and to the continental theological movements that increasingly emphasized physical experience and matter. The result is an exciting, learned account of the feminization of early English prose.