The Discourse of Enclosure: Representing Women in Old English Literature

by Shari Horner

Overview

2001 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Exploring Old English texts ranging from Beowulf to Ælfric's Lives of Saints, this book examines ways that women's monastic, material, and devotional practices in Anglo-Saxon England shaped literary representations of women and femininity. Horner argues that these representations derive from a "discourse" of female monastic enclosure, based on the increasingly strict rules of cloistered confinement that regulated the female religious body in the early Middle Ages. She shows that the female subjects of much Old English literature are enclosed by many layers—literal and figurative, textual, material, discursive, spatial—all of which image and reinforce the powerful institutions imposed by the Church on the female body. Though it has long been recognized that medieval religious women were enclosed, and that virginity was highly valued, this book is the first to consider the interrelationships of these two positions—that is, how the material practices of female monasticism inform the textual operations of Old English literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791450109
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	05/24/2001
Series:	SUNY series in Medieval Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	217
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Shari Horner is Assistant Professor of English at Shippensburg University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Introduction
The Discourse of Enclosure: Inscribing the Feminine in Old English Literature

Chapter One
Looking Into Enclosure in the Old English Female Lyrics

Chapter Two
Voices From the Margins: Women and Textual Enclosure in Beowulf

Chapter Three
Textual/Sexual Violence: The Old English Juliana and the Anglo-Saxon Female Reader

Chapter Four
Bodies and Borders: The Hermeneutics ofEnclosure in Ælfric's Lives of Female Saints

Conclusion
Christina of Markyate and Legacies of Enclosure

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is an important and inventive book. Horner uses a supple argument about the discourse of female enclosure—enclosure in a monastery, enclosure in the body, and enclosure in a text—to link a feminist reading of four Old English works not usually read together: the heroic epic Beowulf, the female-voiced Old English elegies, a verse saint's life, and female portions of the Lives of Saints by Ælfric. The result is an elegant and informative feminist reading of all these works and a developed methodology that sheds light on women's experiences as readers of Old English texts and as subjects within those texts." — Jonathan Wilcox, editor of Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature

From the Publisher

Descriptions of the often sexual in nature violence against female saints are not for the squeamish, but medieval readers understood what pagan torturers did not: that these women were among the select few that could transcend such violation. Exploring Old English texts ranging from to , Horner (English, Shippensburg U.) not only analyzes women's devotional practices in Anglo-Saxon England and period literary representations of femininity, but also links the ideological enclosure of cloistered women with the premium put on virginity. The author concludes that these models of female enclosure prefigured the surge of women's literature and spirituality in the later Middle Ages. Includes an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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