Language as the Site of Revolt in Medieval and Early Modern England: Speaking as a Woman

by M. C. Bodden

Overview

Despite attempts to suppress early women's speech, this study demonstrates that women were still actively engaged in cultural practices and speech strategies that were both complicit with the patriarchal ideology whilst also undermining it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349381449
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	09/06/2011
Series:	The New Middle Ages
Edition description:	1st ed. 2011
Pages:	257
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

M.C. BODDEN is Associate Professor of English at Marquette University, USA.

Table of Contents

Idle Talk and the Criminalization of Women's Speech The Imagined Woman Women, Conversation, Crime, and the Courts Staged Conversations Code-Switching: Male Crossing into Female Speech Domain Margery Kempe: 'I grab the microphone and move my body'

Editorial Reviews

"Against a background of traditional patriarchal anxieties and constraints in regard to women's speech, Bodden's important new study explores the transgressive nature of women's voices, the cultural authorization of bold speech, and agency that women were able to exercise especially within the law courts and in mysticism. This insightful study will be of particular interest to scholars in Medieval and Early European Studies and Women's Studies." - Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Professor of History in the Department of Liberal Studies, DCS, and Medieval and Women's Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Bodden offers the reader abeautifully conceptualized analysis of the engendering politics of language in medieval and early modern England. In so doing,herbook joins the ranks of such classics as Michel de Certeau on mystic speech and Helen Solterer on disputing women.In engaging with the serpent, she emerges as a serpent whisperer." - Kathleen Biddick,Professor of History, Temple University

From the Publisher