Women's Literary Cultures in the Global Middle Ages

Initiates a wider development of inquiries into women's literary cultures to move the reader beyond single geographical linguistic cultural and period boundaries. <p/>Since the closing decades of the twentieth century medieval women's writing has been the subject of energetic conversation and debate. This interest however has focused predominantly on western European writers working within the Christian tradition: the Saxon visionaries Mechthild of Hackeborn Mechthild of Magdeburg Gertrude the Great for example and in England Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe are cases in point. While this present book acknowledges the huge importance of such writers to women's literary history it also argues that they should no longer be read solely within a local context. Instead by putting them into conversation with other literary women and their cultures from wider geographical regions and global cultures - women from eastern Europe and their books dramas and music; the Welsh gwraig llwyn a pherth (woman of bush and brake); the Indian mystic Mirabai; Japanese women writers from the Heian period; women saints from across Christian Europe and those of eleventh-century Islam or late medieval Ethiopia; for instance - much more is to be gained in terms of our understanding of the drivers behind and expressions of medieval women's literary activities in far broader contexts. <p/>This volume considers the dialogue synergies contracts and resonances emerging from such new alignments and to help a wider multidirectional development of this enquiry into women's literary cultures.