Nuns As Historians in Early Modern Germany

by Charlotte Woodford

Overview

This is the first study to highlight the significance of nuns' writings in early modern Germany. Combining scholarly analysis with illuminating case studies—such as an abbess's account of the Reformation, a prioress's diary from the Thirty Years' War, and a biography of a fifteenth-century visionary—Charlotte Woodford introduces the much neglected female historians of the era, and sets their writings in an historical and literary context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199256716
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/05/2002
Series:	Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Selwyn College, Cambridge

Table of Contents

List of abbrievations1. Reading and writing in early modern German convents2. The function of early modern historiography written by nuns3. Caritas Pirckheimer's Denkwürdigkeiten in the context of convent historiography4. From history to autobiography: two accounts of the Thirty Years' War5. Historiography during the Thirty Years' War: The writings of Juliana Ernst and Elisabeth HeroldConclusionAppendixBibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Woodford provides a detailed analysis of little-known primary sources for understanding the lives of women religious in early modern Germany. Of interest to early modern scholars, especially those working on women's writing and local histories of the Reformation and Thirty Years' War. Contains substantial amounts of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century German. For advanced students and faculty." —Religious Studies Review

"A major contribution to the emerging literature on convent writing and historical narration in the German empire.... Woodford's meticulously researched study magnificently illuminates this unknown corpus of historical convent writing and ably delineates the nuanced approaches their authors adopted towards the past.... Woodfortd's study is an invaluable guide to German convent writing. Thanks to her efforts, scholars can now compare the works of these Catholic writers with similar histories in Protestant religious communities and with the religious writing of other early modern women."—Renaissance Quarterly

From the Publisher