Course description
This seminar explores several secular and religious texts written by, or about women, from the late seventh to the late fifteenth centuries. We will be reading texts discussing the female body, texts written by women and representing a female perspective on secular and religious matters, as well as extracts from the first (female) autobiography written in English. The seminar will include a reading of Chaucer’s representation of the Wife of Bath, a formidable character belonging to the company of pilgrim-narrators in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; and a spirited defence of the virtue and learning of women by one of Italy’s earliest woman authors, Christine de Pizan.

All texts will be provided in modern English translation. No knowledge of any medieval languages is required. All primary texts and some secondary essays will be provided as pdfs on Moodle.

Teaching approach
The method of instruction will consist in a variety of pedagogical approaches. The teacher will provide lectures for about 45 minutes per session for some of the sessions. It will be followed by small group discussions and workshop activities, which will be concluded by brief informal presentations by the students. During sessions, we will also structure discussion comparing the ways in which our cultural backgrounds have a huge impact on the way we understand the role played by women in contemporary societies. But it will also allow us to have a better perception of the diversity of views expressed by medieval voices about women’s role in medieval society.

Learning goals
Upon completing this course students should be able to
- read medieval texts written by or for women, with an understanding of the diversity of voices within medieval culture
- to learn to read and discuss theoretical texts linked to the course’s subject
- to be able to apply theoretical knowledge to primary material
- to think more globally about women’s role in medieval and contemporary societies

Evaluation method
Students’ grade will be composed of three elements:
1. A mid-term commentary of an extract of text (30%)
2. Class participation (10%)
3. Final essay (60%)

Syllabus
Week 1 (14 & 16 Sept): Introduction; poem ABC a femmes (from Harley 2253) (online)
Week 2 (21 & 23 Sept): Anglo-Saxon abbesses and missionaries: Hilda and Leoba (extracts from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, and The Life of St Leoba by Rudolf of Fulda) (online)
Week 3 (28 & 30 Sept): Female enclosure; female reading (Ancrene Wisse Part 8; The Life of St Margaret of Antioch) (in classroom, and hereafter)
Week 4 (5 & 7 Oct): Marie de France – a woman writes romance I (Le Fresne, or The Ash Tree)
Week 5 (12 & 14 Oct): Marie de France – a woman writes romance II (Yonec and Eliduc)
Week 6 (19 & 21 Oct): Chaucer’s Women I – The Prioress (The Prioress’s Prologue and Tale, from The Canterbury Tales) PLUS Mid-term evaluation
Week 7: Mid term break
Week 8 (2 & 4 Nov): Medieval Anti-Feminism (extracts from Theophrastus, Jerome, and Walter Map)
Week 9 (9 & 11 Nov): Chaucer’s Women II – The Wife of Bath (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, from The Canterbury Tales)
Week 10 (16-18 Nov): Fifteenth-Century Female Autobiography – Margery Kempe I (extracts from The Book of Margery Kempe)
Week 11 (23 & 25 Nov): Fifteenth-Century Female Autobiography – Margery Kempe II (extracts from The Book of Margery Kempe)
Week 12 (30 Nov & 2 Dec): A Defence of Excellent Women – Christine de Pizan (extracts from The Book of the City of Ladies)
Week 13 (7 & 9 Dec): Essay Submission
Week 14 (14 & 16 Dec): Feedback and Conclusions

BIbliography
Primary Literature
BARRATT, ALEXANDRA (ED.), (1992), Women's Writing in Middle English, New York: Longman
BROWN-GRANT, ROSALIND, (trans.), (1999), Christine de Pizan : The Book of the City of Ladies, London, Penguin
BURGESS, GLYN AND KEITH BUSBY, (trans.), (1999), London, Penguin
COGHILL, NEVILL, (ed.), (2008), The Canterbury Tales, London, Penguin Books
MILLETT, BELLA AND JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE, (ed. and trans.), (1990), Medieval English Prose for Women, Oxford, Clarendon
PETROFF, ELIZABETH, (trans.), (1986), Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, Oxford, OUP
STALEY, LYNN, (ed. and trans.), (2001), The Book of Margery Kempe, New York : Norton

Secondary Literature
BENSON, DAVID AND ELIZABETH ROBERTSON,(ed.), (1990), Chaucer’s Religious Tales, Cambridge, Brewer
BLAMIRES, ALCUIN, (1997), The Case for Women in Medieval Culture, Oxford, Clarendon Press
BLAMIRES, ALCUIN, (ed.), (1992), Women Defamed, Women Defended, Oxford, Clarendon
BROADHURST, KAREN M., (1996), “Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patrons of Literature in French?”, Viator 27, pp. 53–84.
BROWN-GRANT, Rosalind, (1199), Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading beyond Gender, Cambridge University Press
BURGESS, GLYN S., (1987), The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Context, Athens, University of Georgia Press
COOPER, HELEN, (2nd edn 1997), The Canterbury Tales – Oxford Guides to Chaucer, Oxford: OUP
DICKMAN, SUSAN, “Margery Kempe and the Continental Tradition of the Pious Woman”. In Marion GLASSCOE (ed.),(1984), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Dartington Hall, July 1984, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, pp. 150–268.
DINSHAW, CAROLYN, (1999), Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern, Durham, NC, Duke University Press
ERLER, MARY AND MARYANNE KOWALESKI (eds), (1988), Women and Power in the Middle Ages, Athens, University of Georgia Press
FENSTER, Thelma and Clare A. Lees, (eds),(2002), Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, New Middle Ages series, New York, Palgrave
FREEMAN, MICHELLE, (1984), “Marie de France’s Poetics of Silence: the Implications for a Feminine Translatio”, PMLA 99, pp. 860–83.
HUTCHISON, ANN M., (1987), “Devotional Reading in the Monastery and in the Late Medieval Household”, In Michael G. Sargent (ed.), De Cella in Saeculum, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, pp. 215–27.
KRUEGER, ROBERTA L., (1999), “Transforming Maidens: Singlewomen’s Stories in Marie de France’s Lais and Later French Courtly Narratives”, In Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide (eds), Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 146–91
LEYSER, HENRIETTA, (1995), Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England, 450–1500, New York, St Martin’s Press
LOCHRIE, KARMA, (1991), Margery Kempe and the Translations of the Flesh, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press
MARTIN, PISCILLA, (1996), Chaucer’s Women: Nuns, Wives and Amazons, Basingstoke, Macmillan
MCAVOY, LIZ HERBERT AND DIANE WATT (eds.), (2012), The History of British Women Writing, 700-1500, vol. 1, New York, Palgrave Macmillan
MCENTIRE, SANDRA J. (ed.), (1992), Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays, New York: Garland
MEALE, CAROL M., (1993), “. . . Alle the Bokes That I Haue of Latyn, Englisch, and Frensch”: Laywomen and their Books in Late Medieval England”, in Carol M. Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, Cambridge University Press, pp. 128–58
MEALE, CAROL M. (ed.), (1993), Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, Cambridge, CUP
QUILLIGAN, MAUREEN, (1991), The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s ‘Cité des Dames’, Ithaca, Cornell University Press
RENEVEY, DENIS AND CHRISTIANIA WHITEHEAD, (eds), (2000), Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, Cardiff, University of Wales Press
Salih, Sarah,(2001), Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval England, Woodbridge, Boydell Press
SHAHAR, SHULAMITH, (1983), The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages, London, Methuen
SUMMIT, JENNIFER, (2000), Lost Property: The Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380–1589, Chicago, University of Chicago Press
VOADEN, ROSALYNN, (ed.),(1996), Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late Medieval England, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer
WATT, DIANE, (1997), Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, Woodbridge, Brewer
WATT, DIANE, (2007), Medieval Women’s Writing, Cambridge, Polity
WOGAN-BROWNE, JOCELYN, (2001), Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Culture c. 1150–1300: Virginity and Its Authorizations, Oxford, OUP