Women's Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon

by Diane Watt Margaret Paston writing to her husband from Gresham requesting weapons and armour (London, British Library, Add MS 34888, f.29) on display at the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words Exhibition (c) British Library Margaret Paston, a fifteenth century Norfolk gentlewoman, was responsible for the largest collection of personal letters from […]

by Amy Morgan and Diane Watt We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded ESRC IAA funding for a new project, Mapping Medieval Women Writers. Only a handful of medieval women writers are reasonably well-known today—primarily Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, both from Norfolk, who are memorialized in their hometowns of King’s […]

Women and Medieval Literary Culture: From the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century, co-edited by Diane Watt and Corinne Saunders, has won a prestigious 2024 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Titles. This volume arose out of the Leverhulme funded International Network, Women’s Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon. The volume was described by CHOICE in […]

Diane Watt, University of Surrey The British Library’s breathtaking new exhibition, Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, brings to life the experiences, stories and voices of women from the distant past. The show covers the period from 1100 to 1500, and a range of mainly western countries and cultures. Many of the women featured are […]

by Namrata Chaturvedi Transcription from an 18th century manuscript of Sahajobai’s verse. Accessed from Rajasthani Shodh Sansthan, Jodhpur. Reproduced with permission. Dear sister, come let us celebrate with songs of rejoice, The eternal one has descended in human form of his choice.                                                        –Sahajobai, 18th c. north India Sahajobai thus sings of her guru’s (master’s) birth. Known […]