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  • Women and the Divine in Literature before 1700: Essays in Memory of Margot Louis
  • Carol M. Meale
Women and the Divine in Literature before 1700: Essays in Memory of Margot Louis. Edited by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton. Victoria, B.C.: ELS Editions, 2009. Pp. xi + 279; 20 illustrations. $30.

The illustration on the cover of this volume acts as a metaphor for its contents: amid the shadows of the abbey of Fontevrault in France, an illuminated tomb sculpture can be partially glimpsed—that of Eleanor of Aquitaine, holding a book that undoubtedly was intended to be devotional. So it is with Women and the Divine in Literature: scholars—all bar one, female—attempt to throw light upon books that were either written for, or by, women, lifting the shadows in which they have been shrouded for so many centuries.

The breadth of the chronological span is impressive, ranging from the twelfth-century account of the third-century St. Perpetua to the seventeenth-century Susanna Elisabeth Prasch, who provided inspiration and support to her much older husband in his literary endeavors. There is a risk in this approach, in the possibility of fragmentation and lack of cohesion in the book's overall argument. That it avoids this risk is due in no small part to the editing—the choice of contributors and of subjects, and the careful chronological ordering of the chapters. The result is well summed up by Rosalynn Voaden in her Epilogue, in which she coins the phrase "a catena of women," "linked and twined, inspiring, supporting, reflecting and responding, their voices echoing in counterpoint and harmony across the ages" (p. 203). That this is a memorial volume adds a sense of poignancy, but that Margot Louis was part of this "catena" is attested to by colleagues and ex-students, most fully in the Prologue written by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and, perhaps rather too fulsomely, in the opening paragraphs of the first chapter: such a eulogy might have been included more appropriately in the Prologue, or as an opening footnote. The latter practice is adopted by the majority of contributors, though it is perhaps a little strange that three of the twelve did not know Margot Louis personally.

The standard of the contributions is uniformly high, although there are two essays that stand out: Adrienne Williams Boyarin's chapter on the early Middle English Seinte Margarete, and Heather Reid's on the Middle English translation of the story of Asneth. The latter text, written first in Hellenic Jewish, before being translated into Latin and then, in the fifteenth century, probably, as Reid suggests, at the instigation of a female patron, Middle English, was largely unavailable until the TEAMS edition, produced by Russell A. Peck in 1991. Only one manuscript survives, although Reid adduces evidence from medieval library catalogues to show that the Old Testament story in Latin was far from unknown in monastic circles in England and indeed was probably translated into that language at Canterbury in the late twelfth century. Reid's approach derives from anthropological theories of initiation rites, which she applies to Asneth's mystical marriage. The essay draws attention to a much-understudied text and is a fascinating read. Boyarin's, by contrast, takes a more openly feminist stance, analyzing Middle English usage of the terms "sealing" and the "seal," tracing their deployment here to the actual sealing of charters and the appropriation of the idea to The Short Charter of Christ, and thence to Margaret's speech, in which she describes her body as being sealed (and therefore not open to her tormentor Olibrius). In this reading, the fleshly body becomes the skin upon which a text is inscribed before it is sealed by Christ's dispensation. It is difficult in the space available to convey the complex dimensions of Boyarin's work, but it is to be admired for the lucid way in which the argument is set out. [End Page 259]

To return to the beginning, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, in her Introduction to the book, "Skepticism, Agnosticism and Belief: The Spectrum of Attitudes Toward Vision in Late Medieval England," which concentrates on the transmission history of the lives of St. Perpetua...

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