Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 3754
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Chewning , Susannah Mary.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Mysticism and the Anchoritic Community: "A Time... of Veiled Infinity" [suggests that the author's persona presented in the "Wohunge" is feminine and that mystical texts are acts of feminine writing irrespective of the sex of the author].
  • Source: Medieval Women in Their Communities.  Edited by Diane Watt.  University of Toronto Press, 1997.  Pages 116 - 137.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Essay
  • Subject (See Also): Anchoresses Feminist Theory Gender Mystics Narrator Readers Self in Literature Wohunge of Ure Lauerd, Middle English Devotional Work Women in Religion
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: British Isles
  • Century: 13
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table: One figure. Title page of "Wohunge" from British Library, MS Cotton. Titus. D. xviii, f. 127r.
  • Abstract:
  • Related Resources: "Susannah Mary Chewning's contribution "Mysticism and the Anchoritic Community: 'A Time . . . of Veiled Infinity'" looks at the mystical poem "[Th]e Wohunge of Ure Lauerd," which was part of a collection of poems written sometime before 1250. The manuscript in which this poem appears also contains some of the pieces in the "Katherine Group." The audience for this poem was probably a group of educated aristocratic women living within a convent somewhere in the north-west Midlands. Chewning argues that "the persona identified in the text is culturally feminized and that the act of writing the mystical text itself is an act of feminine writing, whether the text is actually written by a man or a woman." (p. 123)" From the review written by Katherine L. French of "Medieval Women in Their Communities," "Medieval Review" (TMR ID: 96.12.11). [Reproduced by permission of the "Medieval Review."].
  • Author's Affiliation: Kean College of New Jersey
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 1997.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 0802042899