World Literature

Three Women of Liege: A Critical Edition of and Commentary on the Middle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d’Oignies - Jennifer Brown

Elizabeth of Spalbeck, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d’Oignies were three of the famous late twelfth-/early thirteenth-century holy women from the region of Brabant and Liege: their life stories (written in Latin by Philip of Clairvaux, Thomas of Cantimpre, and Jacques of Vitry) were read throughout later medieval Europe, and Margery Kempe modelled her book, and her life, upon Marie’s. The Latin lives of these beguine saints were not well known in England, but they were translated into English in the fifteenth century and survive together in a single manuscript: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 114. Three Women of Liege is the first critical edition of these Lives, which represent some of the only evidence of English interest in continental female mysticism. This edition includes an introduction that discusses the role of the manuscript in England and three essays that analyze the roles of these beguines in their Low Countries home of Liege along with the English reception of their lives. The edition itself is also extensively annotated and glossed, making it accessible to any scholar of English medieval literature.

Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture - Jennifer Brown and Donna Alfano Bussell, Editors

Barking Abbey (founded c. 666) is hugely significant for those studying the literary production by and patronage of medieval women. The Abbey had one of the largest libraries of any English nunnery, which included a history of women’s education from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Dissolution; it was also the home of women writers of Latin and Anglo-Norman works, as well as many Middle English manuscript books. The essays in this volume map its literary history, offering a wide-ranging examination of its liturgical, historio-hagiographical, devotional, doctrinal, and administrative texts, with a particular focus on the important hagiographies produced there during the 12th century. It thus makes a major contribution to the literary and cultural history of medieval England and a rich resource for the teaching of women’s texts.

Sexuality, Sociality, and Cosmology in Medieval Literary Texts - Jennifer Brown and Marla Segol, Editors