Feminist Approaches to Early Medieval English Studies

Robin Norris is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Carleton University. She has published on Beowulf, hagiography, and litanies of saints. Along with Johanna Kramer and Hugh Magennis she co-edited Anonymous Old English Lives of Saints (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 63, Harvard University Press 2020). Rebecca Stephenson is Associate Professor of Old and Middle English at University College Dublin. She researches literature associated with multilingualism and monasticism in early medieval England with particular emphasis on scientific texts and computus. She published The Politics of Language: Byrhtferth, Ælfric, and the Multilingual Identity of the Benedictine Reform (2015) and has co-edited several collections of essays on Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. Renée R. Trilling is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Program in Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse (Toronto, 2009) and the Oxford Bibliography of Old English Literature and Critical Theory (Oxford, 2016). She is also Editor for Old English of JEGP, published by the University of Illinois Press.

Introduction (Robin Norris, Rebecca Stephenson, and Renée R. Trilling)
Metacritical Considerations
1. The Lost Victorian Women of Early Medieval English Studies (M. J. Toswell)
2. Embroidered narratives (Christina Lee)
3. Remembering the Lady of Mercia (Scott Thompson Smith)
Affect Theory
4. Be a Man, Beowulf: Sentimental Masculinity and the Gentleness of Kings (E.J. Christie)
5. Shame, Disgust and Ælfric’s Masculine Performance (Alice Jorgensen)
Treatments of Virginity
6. The Ornament of Virginity: Aldhelm’s De uirginitate and the Virtuous Women of the Early English Church (Emily V. Thornbury)
7. Chaste Bodies and Untimely Virgins: Sexuality, Temporality, and Bede’s Aethelthryth (Lisa M.C. Weston)
Medical Discourse
8. Mona.gecynd and flewsan: Wanted and Unwanted Monthly Courses in Old English Medical Texts (Dana M. Oswald)
9. Dangerous Voices, Erased Bodies: Reassessing the Old English Wifgemædla and Witches in Leechbook III (Erin E. Sweany)
10. Women and “Women’s Medicine” in Early Medieval England, from Text to Practice (Christine Voth)
Women’s Literacy
11. The Literate Memory of Hugeburc of Heidenheim (Aidan Conti)
12. A Road Nearly Taken: An Eighth-Century Manuscript in a Woman’s Hand and Franco-Saxon Nuns in Early Medieval English Intellectual History (Matthew T. Hussey)
13.”Historical Accuracy,” Anonymity, and Women’s Authorship: The Case of the Case for Beowulf (Stephen Yeager)