Women's Life Experience in Medieval Writing (The New Middle Ages)

By tracing the theme through different texts and genres, contributors uncover the fabric of experience woven into the writings by, for, and about women. They discover distinct and informal "communities of discourse" and study the learning, reading, and writing practices which women enjoyed. By showing how such practices ran both parallel to, but also often incorporated, traditional, male-focused learning activity this volume advances the "new" genre of "the book of life" and makes a compelling case for a new reading of medieval texts.