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Male Authors, Female Readers
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Male Authors, Female Readers Hardcover - 1995

by Anne Clark Bartlett


From the publisher

"Holy men despise women...and view them as foul and sticking dirt in the road," asserst the male author of the fifteenth-century Book to a Mother. Middle English devotional writings reflect shades of mysogony ranging from the blatant to the subtle, yet these texts were among the most popular literature know to the earliest generation of English women readers.

In the first book to examine this paradox, Anne Clark Bartlett considers why medieval women enjoyed such male-authored works as Speculum Devotorum, The Tree, The Twelve Fruits of the Holy Ghost, and Contemplations on the Dread and Love of God. Demonstrating that these texts actually provided alternative--and more appealing--notions of gender than those authorized by the Church, Bartlett redefines women's participation in medieval culture in terms of far greater agency and empowerment than have generally been acknowledged.

From the rear cover

Although written to increase their female audience's religious fervor, devotional texts implicitly promoted cultural values drawn from other discourses as well. Within the same text, Bartlett shows, a woman reader might be invited to identify not only with the temptress reviled by misogynistic ascetics, but simultaneously with the courtly domina, the supportive spiritual friend of the author, or with the erotic sponsa Christi. Because of the varying levels of literacy of medieval women readers, however - as well as the abundance of competing representations of those readers - the overt messages of devotional texts were interrupted and distorted. As Bartlett analyzes the complex relationship between misogynistic literature and the development of female subjectivity in the Middle Ages, she helps refute the assumption common among feminist critics that women necessarily internalize negative portrayals. An appendix lists and describes all extant books and manuscripts that were owned by medieval English nuns and convents.

Details

  • Title Male Authors, Female Readers
  • Author Anne Clark Bartlett
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition 1st Edition
  • Pages 208
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York
  • Date 1995-05-11
  • ISBN 9780801430381 / 0801430380
  • Weight 1.07 lbs (0.49 kg)
  • Dimensions 9 x 6 x 0.63 in (22.86 x 15.24 x 1.60 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Reading level 1620
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: Medieval (500-1453) Studies
    • Cultural Region: British
    • Sex & Gender: Feminine
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 94039910
  • Dewey Decimal Code 823.309

About the author

Anne Clark Bartlett is Assistant Professor of English at DePaul University.

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Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature

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Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature

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