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Strong Women
Life, Text, and Territory 1347-1645
David Wallace
320 pages
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34 black-and-white halftones
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216x138mm
978-0-19-966134-3
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Paperback
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13 September 2012
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- Fluent and fascinating account of the shocking and dangerous lives - and complex textual afterlives - of four 'strong women': Dorothea of Montau, Margery Kempe of Lynn, Mary Ward Yorkshire, and Elizabeth Cary of Drury Lane
- Impressive historical reach, spanning 14th to the 17th centuries
- Generously illustrated
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.Readership: Students and scholars of Medieval and Renassiance literature and history, and women's studies.
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David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania 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/
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"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
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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
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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