Women and Experience in Later Medieval Writing

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. Experientia and the Construction of Experience in Medieval Writing: An Introduction

   • Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Liz Herbert McAvoy

   Pages 1-23

3. The New Devout and Their Women of Authority

   • Koen Goudriaan

   Pages 25-45

4. Partners in Profession: Inwardness, Experience, and Understanding in Heloise and Abelard

   • Ineke van ’t Spijker

   Pages 47-64

5. Communities of Discourse: Religious Authority and the Role of Holy Women in the Later Middle Ages

   • Carolyn Muessig

   Pages 65-81

6. Two Women of Experience, Two Men of Letters, and the Book of Life

   • Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker

   Pages 83-101

7. “[A]n Awngel Al Clothyd in White”: Rereading the Book of Life as The Book of Margery Kempe

   • Liz Herbert McAvoy

   Pages 103-121

8. Die Gheestelicke Melody: A Program for the Spiritual Life in a Middle Dutch Song Cycle

   • Thom Mertens

   Pages 123-147

9. Handing on Wisdom and Knowledge in Hadewijch of Brabant’s Book of Visions

   • Veerle Fraeters

   Pages 149-168

10. Afterword

    • Diane Watt

    Pages 169-175

11. Back Matter

    Pages 177-194

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This volume examines the common medieval notion of life experience as a source of wisdom and traces that theme through different texts and genres to uncover the fabric of experience woven into the writings by, for, and about women.

• construction
• discourse
• experience
• knowledge
• Medieval Literature
• Middle Ages
• understanding
• women
• writing

"The editors of this volume emphasize the importance of communities of discourse in the sharing of knowledge in informal contexts, including domestic settings . . . Women and Experience in Later Medieval Writing invites us to rethink the perceived dichotomy between male or masculine learning and female or feminine experience. Indeed it goes so far as to challenge its validity. In so doing it invites us to reconsider our very understanding of what constitutes education." - Diane Watt, Professor of English, Aberystwyth University and author of Medieval Women s Writing and Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England

ANNEKE MULDER-BAKKER taught Medieval History and Medieval Studies at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands and is now Emerita at the University of Leiden. Liz Herbert McAvoy is Senior Lecturer in Gender, English Studies, and Medieval Literature at the University of Swansea.

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