Medieval Women in Letters

Letters by Women, to Women, and about Women in Medieval Literatures

edited by Elisabetta Bartoli

Extent: 376 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Literary Studies, Mediterranean Archaeology

Series: Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy

Series volume number: 66

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(December 2025)

ISBN: 9782503616810

Price: $138.00

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Synopsis
Contributing Authors

Collects specialists of various medieval literatures to reflect on the rhetorical, literary, thematic, and historical-cultural aspects of female epistolography.

The letter was the most widespread means of communication in the Middle Ages and the most practiced literary genre also among women. This volume, produced under the auspices of the Medieval Women in Letters project from the MedioEvA Center (University of Siena, Rome Sapienza and Tours), explores the rhetorical, literary, thematic, and historical-cultural aspects of the female epistolography in the Middle Ages. Latin literature constitutes a cohesive element between the various vernacular languages that were establishing themselves during the Middle Ages, and this volume promotes the study of women’s literature and medieval woman by adopting a consistently comparative and translinguistic method, analyzing women’s literature in all the languages used in medieval Europe. The methodology focuses on the literary tradition, especially the linguistic and philological spheres. Specialists in Germanic, Middle Latin, Romance, Arabic, Italian, and Byzantine literature discuss published and unpublished female letters, with particular focus on the main challenges that female writing in the Middle Ages presents, including: authorship, the relationship between copyist and author, the degree of female literacy, training structures, the role of writing in the various seasons of the Middle Ages, and the modern critical reception of female epistolography. As a result, this volume seeks to dismantle obsolete critical prejudices and redefine a literary canon that fully includes women.

Edited by Elisabetta Bartoli

Other Titles in this Series

St Anselm and the Handmaidens of God

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Volume 7

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Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages

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Volume 38

Edited by Mariken Teeuwen Edited by Irene van Renswoude

Homo Legens

Styles et pratiques de lecture: Analyses comparees des traditions orales et ecrites au Moyen Age / Styles and Practices of Reading: Comparative Analyses of Oral and Written Traditions in the Middle Ages

Volume 26

Edited by Svetlana Loutchitsky Edited by MC Varol Bornes

Writing Names in Medieval Sacred Spaces

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Volume 56

Edited by Estelle Ingrand-Varenne Edited by Elisa Pallotini Edited by Janneke Raaijmakers

Development of Literate Mentalities in East Central Europe

Volume 9

Edited by Anna Adamska Edited by Marco Mostert

Trust, Authority, and the Written Word in the Royal Towns of Medieval Hungary

Volume 41

By (author) Katalin Szende

Manuscript Communication

Visual and Textual Mechanics of Communication in Hagiographical Texts from the Southern Low Countries, 900-1200

Volume 32

By (author) Tjamke Snijders

Pastoral Works

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Volume 64

by Bastiaan Waagmeester

Graffiti in Medieval and Early Modern Societies

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Volume 69

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Volume 20

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Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Vilnius

Forms of Writing and Rhetorical Spaces in the City

Volume 55

By (author) Jakub Niedzwiedz

Social Consequences of Literacy in Medieval Scandinavia

Volume 11

By (author) Arnved Nedkvitne

Documenting the Everyday in Medieval Europe

The Social Dimensions of a Writing Revolution, 1250-1350

Volume 42

By (author) Paul Bertrand

Medieval Letters

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Volume 33

Edited by Christian Hogel Edited by Elisabetta Bartoli

Old English Poetry from Manuscript to Message

Volume 58

By (author) Peter Lucas

Vernacularity in England and Wales, c. 1300-1550

Volume 17

Edited by Elizabeth Salter Edited by Helen Wicker

New Light on Formulas in Oral Poetry and Prose

Volume 57

Edited by Daniel Savborg Edited by Bernt O. Thorvaldsen

Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages

Essays on a Conjunction and its Consequences in Honour of D. H. Green

Volume 12

Edited by Mark Chinca Edited by Christopher Young

Le scribe d’archives dans l’Occident medieval

formations, carrieres, reseaux

Volume 43

edited by Xavier Hermand, Jean-Francois Nieus and Etienne Renard

Forms of Individuality and Literacy in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

Volume 31

Edited by Franz-Josef Arlinghaus

Materiality of Medieval Administration in Northern England

Volume 59

By (author) Abigail Armstrong

Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication (Western Europe, tenth-thirteenth centuries)

Volume 21

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Words in the Middle Ages / Les Mots au Moyen Age

Volume 46

Edited by Victoria Turner Edited by Vincent Debiais

Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

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Volume 14

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Stilus – modus – usus

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Volume 44

Edited by Jessika Nowak Edited by Georg Strack

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Volume 34

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Volume 22

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Volume 47

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Volume 8

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