To the Glory of Her Sex: Women’s Roles in the Composition of Medieval Texts by Joan M. Ferrante (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER JOAN M. FERRANTE. To the Glory ofHer Sex: Womens Roles in the Composi­ tion ofMedieval Texts. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana Uni­ versity Press, 1997. Pp. xii, 295. $39.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. At the end of this book, Joan Ferrante laments women's loss of "their proper place in political, religious, and literary history" (p. 213), en­ listing the present volume in the "restoration" of that place. But this work can be more fittingly termed the unveiling of a monument, one based on the last twenty years' excavation and assemblage of medieval women's writings and literary roles. Defining its scope broadly in the subtitle, this study sketches a "tradition," though not a self-conscious one, of female literary activity from the fourth to the fourteenth century. By so doing, this work helps ensure that the tradition of scholarship on medieval women writers of which it is part will be far more self­ conscious, and less prone to loss, than the earlier tradition it outlines. Ferrante's book emerges from her research into the surprisingly rich field of medieval women's letters, a genesis that enables Ferrante to con­ textualize her survey within an awareness of the issues raised by women in epistolary venues. The promised companion volume on medieval women's letters will no doubt enable Ferrante's readers as well to view the accomplishments of medieval women as writers and patrons ofwrit­ ing against the backdrop of negotiation, diatribe, and support she al­ ludes to in the letters. The aim of the present volume, then, is to explore women's shaping of medieval writings, whether as writers themselves or as patrons, instigators, or recipients of texts written by men. The roles surveyed range from "collaboration" (chapters 2-4, women as instiga­ tors or patrons of men's writing on women) to "control" (chapters 5-6, women as authors writing on women); the writers, from Jerome to Christine de Pisan; the areas of writing, from religious to historical, courtly, and visionary. Sometimes generalizing from a few works, but always drawing on the tremendous depth and breadth of her research, Ferrante argues for sig­ nificant distinctions across genres and times between works produced by and for women and those produced by and for men (or for general au­ diences). Religious works written by or for women, beginning with the oft­ cited letters of Jerome, demonstrate respect for women as serious think­ ers, and often insist on identifying their first audience as female, writing as if to underscore the significance of the lack of "sexual discrimination" 352 REVIEWS (p.66) in their responses to queries put to them by women.Women from Eustochium to Heloise are analyzed as instigators or collaborators in the religious works written to or for them by men like Alcuin, or Peter Damian.According to Ferrante, whatever their hypothetical or principled objections to women in positions of power, the male writers she discusses, clerical and secular, by and large deal respectfully with their female audiences or patrons. Likewise, in contrast to male­ commissioned histories, those written by or for women are more "alert to ...women in history and ...[provide them} models to follow and avoid" (p.72), pay more attention to women in power, emphasize family ties (especially maternal), and admire "active women, both in the public sphere and in the patronage of letters" (p. 106).For example, in the outburst of history-writing that surrounds the Norman conquest of En­ gland, Ferrante singles out for their political support of the women who requested them the two works commissioned by the English queens Emma and Edith (p.90), and notes the unusually close attention paid to women's actions and simply to naming women in the Gesta regum anglorum written by William of Malmesbury at the request of queen Matilda (later presented to her daughter Empress Matilda).Similarly, women who commissioned romances may have had political as well as literary motives.In highlighting "the lady in command or the damsel in distress" (p.107), romances by or for men are more likely to feature women who need rescue, whereas romances by or for women more often feature "the lady in...