Women, the Book, and the Worldly

Studies of women's roles in the secular literary world, as patrons, authors, readers, and characters in secular literature.This second volume of proceedings from the `Women and the Book' conference, held at St Hilda's College, Oxford in 1993, brings together fifteen papers dealing with women's experience in the secular literary world. It covers the whole variety of roles women might take, as patrons, authors, readers, and characters in secular literature; encompassed in its range are well-known characters, real and fictional, such as Christine de Pisan and the Wife of Bath, and the more obscure but no less fascinating topic of women in Chinese medieval court poetry. Like its predecessor Women, the Book, and the Godly(Brewer, 1995), this volume illuminates the world of medieval women with carefulscholarship and attention to sources, producing new readings and new materials which shed fresh light on an increasingly important field of study. Contributors: PATRICIA SKINNER, PHILIP E. BENNETT, JENNIFER GOODMAN, CHARITY CANNON-WILLARD, BENJAMIN SEMPLE, ANNE BIRRELL, JEANETTE BEER, MARK BALFOUR, CAROL HARVEY, HEATHER ARDEN, KAREN JAMBECK, JULIA BOFFEY, JENNIFER SUMMIT, MARGARITA STOCKER

The articles are all lively, concise and readable: each contribution illuminates a variety of issues connected to women and reading, particularly secular reading, and each offers insights applicable well beyond its immediate context.

JANE H.M. TAYLOR is Emeritus Professor of French at Durham University. JULIA BOFFEY is Professor of Medieval Studies in the Department of English at Queen Mary University of London.