Strong Women: Life, Text, and Territory 1347-1645

Author:   David Wallace (Judith Rodin Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
ISBN:  

9780199661343


Pages:   322
Publication Date:   13 September 2012
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Our Price $81.95 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

Strong Women: Life, Text, and Territory 1347-1645


Add your own review!

Overview

It takes a strong woman to secure bookish remembrance in future times; to see her life becoming a life. David Wallace explores the lives of four Catholic women - Dorothea of Montau (1347-1394) and Margery Kempe of Lynn (c. 1373-c. 1440); Mary Ward of Yorkshire (1585-1645) and Elizabeth Cary of Drury Lane (c. 1585-1639) and and the fate of their writings. All four shock, surprise, and court historical danger. Dorothea of Montau punishes her body and spends all day in church; eight of her nine neglected children die. Kempe, mother of fourteen, empties whole churches with a piercing cry learned at Jerusalem. Ward, living holily but un-immured, is denounced as an Amazon, a chattering hussy, an Apostolic Virago, and a galloping girl. Cary, having left her husband torturing Catholics in Dublin castle, converts to Roman Catholicism in Irish stables in London. Each of these women is mulier fortis, a strong woman: had she been otherwise, Wallace argues, her life would never have been written. The earliest texts of these lives are mostly near-contemporaneous with the women they represent, but their public reappearances have been partial and episodic, with their own complex histories. The lives of these strong women continue to be rewritten long after this premodern period. Incipient European war determines what Kempe must represent between her first discovery in 1934 and full publication in 1940. Dorothea of Montau, first promoted to counter eastern paganism, becomes a bastion against Bolshevism in the 1930s; her cult's meaning is fought out between Günter Grass and Josef Ratzinger. Cary's Catholic daughters, Benedictine nuns, must write of their mother as if she were a saint. Ward's work is not yet done: her followers, having won the right not to be enclosed, must now enter the closed spaces of Roman clerical power.

Full Product Details

Author:   David Wallace (Judith Rodin Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.40cm , Height: 1.70cm , Length: 21.60cm
Weight:   0.390kg
ISBN:  

9780199661343


ISBN 10:   0199661340
Pages:   322
Publication Date:   13 September 2012
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction 1: Borderline Sanctity: Dorothea of Montau, 1347-1394 2: Anchoritic Damsel: Margery Kempe of Lynn, c. 1373- c. 1440 3: Holy Amazon: Mary Ward of Yorkshire, 1585-1645 4: Vice Queen of Ireland: Elizabeth Cary of Drury Lane, c. 1585-1639 Bibliography Index

Reviews

Wallace's groundbreaking and fascinating work will be of interest to feminist scholars, historians, and all those concerned with the premodern female experience, and the evolution of Catholicism in England and Europe. Katherine Heavey, Renaissance Quarterly


<br> Few books in this field are so richly and widely erudite, yet such irresistible page-turners. Wallace's prose sparkles (at one point he translates lunatica di poco cervello as a bear of little brain [241]), making Strong Women a must not just for church historians and literary scholars, but for anyone who enjoys a rollicking good read. --Speculum<p><br> [A] fascinating series of readings of four Catholic women's lives/lives, pre- and post-Reformation. Scholars of medieval and Reformation studies, and any general reader of women and religion, travel, and European culture would learn much from this book...It will shape the field for years to come. --Recusant History<p><br> Readers in Reformation and Counter-Reformation history will enjoy grappling with Wallace's provocative introductory statements about the male domination of Reformation studies...There is much of interest in this book for literary scholars as well as historians. It will shape the field for years to come. --Recusant History<p><br>


Author Information

David Wallace studied for a BA (1976) in English and Related Literature at York and for a Ph.D. at St Edmund's College, Cambridge. Following a Research Fellowship at Cambridge (1981-3) and a Mellon Fellowship at Stanford (1984-5), he taught at the University of Texas at Austin (1985-91) and then at the University of Minnesota, where he was Professor of English and Frenzel Chair in Liberal Arts (1991-6). He has been Judith Rodin Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania since 1996, with stints as Visiting Professor at King's College, Cambridge, Melbourne University, Princeton University, and Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He has done extensive work for BBC radio, with documentary features on Bede, Malory, Margery Kempe, and John Leland. He is currently editing what will be the first literary history of Europe, 1348-1418, for OUP: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~dwallace/regeneration/

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

Aorrng

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List