Circuits of Power: A Model for Rereading Poet-Patron Relations in Late-Medieval Defences of Women

This essay applies a theoretical model drawn from twentieth-century organization studies to late-medieval texts written in defence of women, in order to refresh critical appreciation of the dynamics of poet-patron relations at play in this corpus, the interest of whose patronage situations has been underestimated. By reading three sample poems (in both textual and paratextual dimensions) as “circuits of power,” we will be able to unpick the manoeuvrings of the agents contributing to a given book’s production and reception; to re-assess the framework of power relations in patronage as fulfilling a productive rather than a regulatory role; and to question more fully what constitutes authority and identity, in its various and multi-faceted forms in premodern literary practice.