Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre

by Karen Cherewatuk, Ulrike Wiethaus

Overview

Explored in this book are women's contributions to letter writing in western Europe from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries. The essays represent the first attempt to chart medieval women's achievements in epistolarity, and the contributions to this volume situate the women writers in a historical context and employ a variety of feminist approaches.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812214376
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/1993
Series:	The Middle Ages Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.53(d)
Lexile:	1500L (what's this?)

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction: Women Writing Letters in the Middle Ages	1
	Radegund and Epistolary Tradition	20
	Visions and Rhetorical Strategy in the Letters of Hildegard of Bingen	46
	"Wholly Guilty, Wholly Innocent": Self-Definition in Heloise's Letters to Abelard	64
	"Io Catarina": Ecclesiastical Politics and Oral Culture in the Letters of Catherine of Siena	87
	"No Writing for Writing's Sake": The Language of Service and Household Rhetoric in the Letters of the Paston Women	122
	"Seulette a part"--The "Little Woman on the Sidelines" Takes Up Her Pen: The Letters of Christine de Pizan	139
	"If I Had an Iron Body": Femininity and Religion in the Letters of Maria de Hout	171
	Bibliography	193
	Index	207
	Contributors	217