Women the Book and the Worldly

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 careful scholarship 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