Maistresse of My Wit: Medieval Women, Modern Scholars (review)

This book in many ways is brave and daring. As the editors indicate in their Introduction, the 'maistresse of my wit' of the title has undergone 'a wilful reinterpretation' from that of Geoffrey Chaucer's muse in his Legend of the Good Woman so that 'it has been transformed into an invocation of female creative influence and enunciative guidance' (p. 1).

This collection is the product of an ambitious project to examine the reciprocal relationship that can develop between researchers and the medieval women they study. In doing so, the book turns on its head the axiom that underpins 'serious' academic scholarship, that is, the need for 'objective distance' between researcher and the researched. It calls instead for an examination of the affective relationship between the two and for the authors to deliberately insert themselves in the text, to make themselves, their lives and their work open to the same kind of critical analysis to which their historical subjects are more usually subjected, and, in so doing, gain new insights into the women they study as well as into their own motivations. The editors argue that such an approach is particularly needed in medieval studies because of the medieval academy's stringent demarcation between the professional scholarly medievalist (for which read male tenured academic) and the amateur, imaginative and popular strain of medievalism (for which read female) from which it strives to differentiate itself. While the general point may hold true, I do not think that this phenomenon is peculiar to the study of the Middle Ages; it is a problem that is endemic to the study of any historical period.

The 12 chapters that comprise this book are so diverse that the collection as a whole almost defies review and so I will focus on broad themes rather than an analysis of individual articles. The four distinct sections – 'The Practice of Medieval Studies' (Maddern and Harding, Mews, Richards and D'Arcens), 'Empathy, Ethics and Imagination' (Watson, Watt and Ruys), 'Medieval and Modern Women' (Mitchell, Krahmer and Børresen) and 'Women Readers' (Jenkins and Wogan-Browne) – do manage to give the book a thematic coherence, while at the same time each contribution, because the persona of each individual author is so much a part of what is being theorized and analysed, brings with it its own approach and its own delights.

We learn much in the first section about the problems of the practice of medieval studies, but the intellectual journeys of the authors and their very differing relationships with their historical subjects is the most fascinating aspect of this section. As a historian of fifteenth and sixteenth Italian Renaissance women's letters, I found Maddern and Harding's article of particular appeal. I have thought of writing a letter(s) to the women I have studied for so long but have never attempted it, often marvelling at the daring of our students who delight in attempting such tasks in examinations (but rarely succeed).

I am equally saddened by the barriers, enumerated by many of the female authors, which face the female scholar, both medieval and modern, who is by definition either an amateur or of necessity a professional virgin forced to sacrifice motherhood (D'Arcens, Ruys, Wogan-Browne). However, the critiques by some authors of the traditions and practices of the medieval academy as they relate to the study of medieval women suggest that change is possible in the academy.

The issue of empathy, ethics and the use of the imagination in historical writing has been one of much debate. As scholars we are taught to value objectivity rather than to have an empathic or imaginative relationship with those whom we have researched. Watson's critique of Caroline Walker Bynum's book Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Watt's discussion of Margery Kempe and Ruys on Heloise demonstrate how much we learn about our historical subjects from our...