Bloomsbury Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 6501100 (Studies in Early Medieval History)

Womens 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, 6501100 focuses on the period before the so-called Barking Renaissance of womens writing in the twelfth century. By examining the surviving evidence of womens authorship, as well as the evidence of womens engagement with literary culture more widely, Diane Watt argues that early womens 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 womens writing, Women, Writing and Religion in England, 6501100 examines womens literary engagement in monasteries such as Ely, Whitby, Barking and Wilton Abbey, as well as from letters and hagiographies from the eighth and ninth centuries. Diane Watt provides a much-needed look at womens writing in the early medieval period that is crucial to understanding womens literary history more broadly.