Image of Le Dyalogue’s frontispiece “My God, my creator, my redeemer, illuminate my interior eyes.” So begins the main text of Le Dyalogue de la duchesse de Bourgogne a Jesus Christ (London, The British Library, Add. MS 7970), commissioned by Margaret of York, the Duchess of Burgundy, around 1468. Margaret was a prominent manuscript patron, […]
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Artist unknown © public domain March 25 is Lady Day, a traditional name in England for the Feast of the Annunciation. This feast commemorates Gabriel’s proclamation to Mary that she will be the mother of God (Luke 1: 26-38). After this event, when Mary visits her cousin, Elizabeth, Mary declaims a poem in praise of […]
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© The British Library Board: London, British Library, Harley MS 4431, fol. 3r – Christine presenting her book to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria Is Christine de Pizan a member of the literary “canon”? Although she was recently cited as an example of a woman author who has managed to enter it, she certainly hasn’t always had a place […]
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The Middle-English alliterative dream poem, Pearl, that appears uniquely in British Library MS Cotton Nero A.X, is illustrated with four miniatures. In the first, the narrator falls asleep. The second shows him in his dream, walking through a garden. In the third, still dreaming, he encounters a figure, the Pearl-Maiden, who is on the […]
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Pens, ink, and the hands that hold the book: The Chastising of God’s Children In Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125, one of the twelve manuscripts in which the devotional compilation The Chastising of God’s Children survives, the prologue is addressed to a ‘dere frend’ (f. 1r) rather than to a ‘religious sister’. In the […]
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Although my degrees have been in Philosophy, Aesthetics and (latterly) in Environmental Science, I have written poetry all my life. I have been fortunate in being published widely, and I give frequent readings all over Britain and abroad. Two of my collections were published by Oversteps Books, and I subsequently took over as Managing Editor […]
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