Diane Watt – författare

This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between 700 and 1500. It brings to the fore a wide range of women's literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman alongside that of the English vernacular, demanding a rethinking of the traditions of literary history, and ultimately the concept of 'writing' itself.

This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualities outside the metropolis. It explores sexualities and sexual experiences in a variety of rural and marginal spaces with international contributions from a wide range of disciplines. These include: literary and cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, geography, history and law. Among the topics uncovered are:* a lesbian in rural England* sexual life in rural Wales* sexuality in rural South Africa* scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics* nature and homosexuality in literature* Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space* how 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.

This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualities outside the metropolis. It explores sexualities and sexual experiences in a variety of rural and marginal spaces with international contributions from a wide range of disciplines. These include: literary and cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, geography, history and law. Among the topics uncovered are:* a lesbian in rural England* sexual life in rural Wales* sexuality in rural South Africa* scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics* nature and homosexuality in literature* Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space* how 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.

This book fills a gap in the market by providing detailed small-scale studies of women as members of a whole range of different types of communities. Women from a wide variety of backgrounds are discussed in terms of regionality. Women from the geographical areas which correspond roughly to modern Wales, England, France, Italy, and Germany are included; in terms of Jewish and Christian faiths are covered in terms of social and economic conditions, rich and poor, religious and secular, noblewomen and commoners are represented. Although one study looks at evidence from as early as the ninth century, for the most part the book concentrates on the period between 1200 and 1500. These essays all consider the historical experience of women to be distinct from men, but they are not restricted to a single theoretical perspective or approach.

Medieval Women's Writing is a major new contribution to our understanding of women's writing in England, 1100-1500.The most comprehensive account to date, it includes writings in Latin and French as well as English, and works for as well as by women. Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the Paston women are discussed alongside the Old English lives of women saints, The Life of Christina of Markyate, the St Albans Psalter, and the legends of women saints by Osbern Bokenham.Medieval Women's Writing addresses these key questions: Who were the first women authors in the English canon?What do we mean by women's writing in the Middle Ages?What do we mean by authorship?How can studying medieval writing contribute to our understanding of women's literary history?Diane Watt argues that female patrons, audiences, readers, and even subjects contributed to the production of texts and their meanings, whether written by men or women. Only an understanding of textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp fully women's engagement with literary culture. This radical rethinking of early womens literary history has major implications for all scholars working on medieval literature, on ideas of authorship, and on women's writing in later periods. The book will become standard reading for all students of these debates.

Medieval Women's Writing is a major new contribution to our understanding of women's writing in England, 1100-1500.The most comprehensive account to date, it includes writings in Latin and French as well as English, and works for as well as by women. Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the Paston women are discussed alongside the Old English lives of women saints, The Life of Christina of Markyate, the St Albans Psalter, and the legends of women saints by Osbern Bokenham.Medieval Women's Writing addresses these key questions: Who were the first women authors in the English canon?What do we mean by women's writing in the Middle Ages?What do we mean by authorship?How can studying medieval writing contribute to our understanding of women's literary history?Diane Watt argues that female patrons, audiences, readers, and even subjects contributed to the production of texts and their meanings, whether written by men or women. Only an understanding of textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp fully women's engagement with literary culture. This radical rethinking of early womens literary history has major implications for all scholars working on medieval literature, on ideas of authorship, and on women's writing in later periods. The book will become standard reading for all students of these debates.

Contemporary ideals of science representing disinterested and objective fields of investigation have their origins in the seventeenth century. However, 'new science' did not simply or uniformly replace earlier beliefs about the workings of the natural world, but entered into competition with them. It is this complex process of competition and negotiation concerning ways of seeing the natural world that is charted by the essays in this book. The collection traces the many overlaps between 'literary' and 'scientific' discourses as writers in this period attempted both to understand imaginatively and empirically the workings of the natural world, and shows that a discrete separation between such discourses and spheres is untenable. The collection is designed around four main themes-'Philosophy, Thought and Natural Knowledge', 'Religion, Politics and the Natural World', 'Gender, Sexuality and Scientific Thought' and 'New Worlds and New Philosophies.' Within these themes, the contributors focus on the contests between different ways of seeing and understanding the natural world in a wide range of writings from the period: in poetry and art, in political texts, in descriptions of real and imagined colonial landscapes, as well as in more obviously 'scientific' documents.

The lives of women in religious communities in late medieval Europe are the main focus of this volume which brings together a body of original research by historians and literary scholars and discusses a variety of such communities in France, Germany and Wales. The perspective is also broadened to include the lives of women in relation to the local community in places as far apart as East Anglia and southern Italy.The volume is a significant contribution to a fast developing field and should appeal not only to medieval specialists but all those with an interest in women's history and writing.

An innovative reading of John Gower’s work and an exciting new approach to medieval vernacular texts“Moral Gower” he was called by friend and sometime rival Geoffrey Chaucer, and his “Confessio Amantis” has been viewed as an uncomplicated analysis of the universe, combining erotic narratives with ethical guidance and political commentary. Diane Watt offers the first sustained reading of John Gower’s “Confessio” to argue that this early vernacular text offers no real solutions to the ethical problems it raises-and in fact actively encourages perverse readings.Drawing on a combination of queer and feminist theory, ethical criticism, and psychoanalytic, historicist, and textual criticism, Watt focuses on the language, sex, and politics in Gower’s writing. How, she asks, is Gower’s “Confessio” related to contemporary controversies over vernacular translation and debates about language politics? How is Gower’s treatment of rhetoric and language gendered and sexualized, and what bearing does this have on the ethical and political structure of the text? What is the relationship between the erotic, ethical, and political sections of “Confessio Amantis”? Watt demonstrates that Gower engaged in the sort of critical thinking more commonly associated with Chaucer and William Langland at the same time that she contributes to modern debates about the ethics of criticism.

A history of women prophets from medieval saints to radical Protestants.Diane Watt sets aside the conventional hiatus between the medieval and early modern periods in her study of women's prophecy, following the female experience from medieval sainthood to radical Protestantism. The English women prophets and visionaries whose voices are recovered here all lived between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries and claimed, through the medium of trances and eucharistic piety, to speak for God. They include Margery Kempe and the medieval visionaries, Elizabeth Barton (the Holy Maid of Kent), the Reformation martyr Anne Askew and other godly women described in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, and Lady Eleanor Davies as an example of a woman prophetof the Civil War. The strategies women devised to be heard and read are exposed, showing that through prophecy they were often able to intervene in the religious and political discourse of the their times: the role of God's secretary gave them the opportunity to act and speak autonomously and publicly.Winner of Foster Watson Memorial Gift for 1998.Professor Diane Watt is Head of the School of English and Languages, University of Surrey.

Focusing on England but covering a wide range of European and global traditions and influences, this authoritative volume examines the central role of medieval women in the production and circulation of books and considers their representation in medieval literary texts, as authors, readers and subjects, assessing how these change over time. Engaging with Latin, French, German, Welsh and Gaelic literary culture, it places British writing in wider European contexts while also considering more distant influences such as Arabic. Essays span topics including book production and authorship; reception; linguistic, literary, and cultural contexts and influences; women's education and spheres of knowledge; women as writers, scribes and translators; women as patrons, readers and book owners; and women as subjects. Reflecting recent trends in scholarship, the volume spans the early Middle Ages through to the eve of the Reformation and emphasises the multilingual, multicultural and international contexts of women's literary culture.

This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between 700 and 1500. It brings to the fore a wide range of women's literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman alongside that of the English vernacular, demanding a rethinking of the traditions of literary history, and ultimately the concept of 'writing' itself.

Contemporary ideals of science representing disinterested and objective fields of investigation have their origins in the seventeenth century. However, 'new science' did not simply or uniformly replace earlier beliefs about the workings of the natural world, but entered into competition with them. It is this complex process of competition and negotiation concerning ways of seeing the natural world that is charted by the essays in this book. The collection traces the many overlaps between 'literary' and 'scientific' discourses as writers in this period attempted both to understand imaginatively and empirically the workings of the natural world, and shows that a discrete separation between such discourses and spheres is untenable. The collection is designed around four main themes-'Philosophy, Thought and Natural Knowledge', 'Religion, Politics and the Natural World', 'Gender, Sexuality and Scientific Thought' and 'New Worlds and New Philosophies.' Within these themes, the contributors focus on the contests between different ways of seeing and understanding the natural world in a wide range of writings from the period: in poetry and art, in political texts, in descriptions of real and imagined colonial landscapes, as well as in more obviously 'scientific' documents.

This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between 700 and 1500. It brings to the fore a wide range of women's literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman alongside that of the English vernacular, demanding a rethinking of the traditions of literary history, and ultimately the concept of 'writing' itself.

Women’s literary histories usually start in the later Middle Ages, but recent scholarship has shown that actually women were at the heart of the emergence of the English literary tradition. Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 focuses on the period before the so-called ‘Barking Renaissance’ of women’s writing in the 12th century. By examining the surviving evidence of women’s authorship, as well as the evidence of women’s engagement with literary culture more widely, Diane Watt argues that early women’s writing was often lost, suppressed, or deliberately destroyed. In particular she considers the different forms of male ‘overwriting’, to which she ascribes the multiple connotations of ‘destruction’, ‘preservation’, ‘control’ and ‘suppression’. She uses the term to describe the complex relationship between male authors and their female subjects to capture the ways in which texts can attempt to control and circumscribe female autonomy.Written by one of the leading experts in medieval women’s writing, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 examines women’s literary engagement in monasteries such as Ely, Whitby, Barking and Wilton Abbey, as well as letters and hagiographies from the 8th and 9th centuries. Diane Watt provides a much-needed look at women’s writing in the early medieval period that is crucial to understanding women’s literary history more broadly.

Women’s literary histories usually start in the later Middle Ages, but recent scholarship has shown that actually women were at the heart of the emergence of the English literary tradition. Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 focuses on the period before the so-called ‘Barking Renaissance’ of women’s writing in the 12th century. By examining the surviving evidence of women’s authorship, as well as the evidence of women’s engagement with literary culture more widely, Diane Watt argues that early women’s writing was often lost, suppressed, or deliberately destroyed. In particular she considers the different forms of male ‘overwriting’, to which she ascribes the multiple connotations of ‘destruction’, ‘preservation’, ‘control’ and ‘suppression’. She uses the term to describe the complex relationship between male authors and their female subjects to capture the ways in which texts can attempt to control and circumscribe female autonomy.Written by one of the leading experts in medieval women’s writing, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 examines women’s literary engagement in monasteries such as Ely, Whitby, Barking and Wilton Abbey, as well as letters and hagiographies from the 8th and 9th centuries. Diane Watt provides a much-needed look at women’s writing in the early medieval period that is crucial to understanding women’s literary history more broadly.

The remarkable story of Margaret Paston, whose letters form the most extensive collection of personal writings by a medieval English woman.Drawing on the largest archive of medieval correspondence relating to a single family in the UK, God's Own Gentlewoman explores what everyday life was like during the turbulent decades at the height of the Wars of the Roses. Covering topics including political conflicts and familial in-fighting, forbidden love affairs and clandestine marriages, bloody battles and sieges, fear of plague and sudden death, friendships and animosity, and childbirth and child mortality, Margaret's letters provide us with unparalleled insight into all aspects of life in late medieval England.Diane Watt, a world expert on medieval women's writing, offers insight into Margaret's activities, experiences, emotions and relationships, presenting the life of a medieval woman who was at times absorbed by the mundane and domestic, but who found herself caught up in the most extraordinary situations and events.

The remarkable story of Margaret Paston, whose letters form the most extensive collection of personal writings by a medieval English woman.Drawing on the largest archive of medieval correspondence relating to a single family in the UK, God's Own Gentlewoman explores what everyday life was like during the turbulent decades at the height of the Wars of the Roses. Covering topics including political conflicts and familial in-fighting, forbidden love affairs and clandestine marriages, bloody battles and sieges, fear of plague and sudden death, friendships and animosity, and childbirth and child mortality, Margaret's letters provide us with unparalleled insight into all aspects of life in late medieval England.Diane Watt, a world expert on medieval women's writing, offers insight into Margaret's activities, experiences, emotions and relationships, presenting the life of a medieval woman who was at times absorbed by the mundane and domestic, but who found herself caught up in the most extraordinary situations and events.

The Paston letters viewed in the context of medieval women's writing and medieval letter writing.The Paston letters form one of only two surviving collections of fifteenth-century correspondence, in their case especially rich in letters from the women of the family. Clandestine love affairs, secret marriages, violent family rows, bickering with neighbours, battles and sieges, threats of murder and kidnapping, fears of plague: these are just some of the topics discussed in the letters of the Paston women.Diane Watt's introduction seeks to place these letters in the context of medieval women's writing and and medieval letter writing. Her interpretive essay reconstructs the lives of these women by examining what the letters reveal about women's literacy and education, lifein the medieval household, religion and piety, health and medicine, and love, marriage, family relationships, and female friendships in the middle ages.Professor Diane Watt is Head of the School of English and Languages, University of Surrey.