Medieval Women Readers and Writers.

Catalog description

What did women write before 16th century? Who was the readership of their texts? How did male authors represent women in medieval literature? What did their books look like before the advent of print? This course explores the intellectual life of medieval women in relationship to their socio-cultural and historical contexts. We will look at women as readers and producers of literature and try to understand how these roles were reconcilable to women’s many other roles, such as mother, wife, businesswoman, etc. In addition, we will examine how women are represented in manuscript illuminations, and how images shape early readers’ interpretations and contribute to the process of making meaning. Readings are grouped according to the sociocultural context in which works about (and by) women were produced, though we will see that some texts resist such simplistic classifications. ( DVSY , GE2B , GEDI , GEND , GEWE )