More Shopping OptionsThe essays in this collection suggest the similar, and also strikingly dissimilar, strategies of women working within medieval courtly cultures to mitigate traditional patriarchal constraints. Many of the works and authors focus on the courtly aspects of medieval European and Heian culture in which art, literature, and love are the highest pursuits. For both, living is itself art. It supplies instructors and students of world literature, women’s studies, and medieval literature with essential, useful analysis in an area that previously has been the territory of specialists.
Barbara Stevenson is Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.
Cynthia Ho is Associate Professor of Literature at the University of North Carolina, Asheville.
"...provides new, thought-provoking perspectives and can be read fruitfully by those interested in literature in general and women's studies in particular." --Choice
Introduction--Barbara Stevenson and Cynthia Ho * Preface--Toshi Takamiya * Part I: Reading Women Writers * Speaking For: Surrogates and The Tale of Genji--Richard Okada * Re-Visioning the Widow Christine de Pizan--Barbara Stevenson * On Becoming Ukifune: Autobiographical Heroines in Heian and Kamakura Literature--Joshua S. Mostow * The Influence of St. Birgitta’s Revelations on The Book of Margery Kempe: St. Brigitta and Margery Kempe as Wives and Mothers--Nanda Hopenwasser and Signe Wegener * Part II: Comparative Studies * The Voice of the Court Woman Poet--S. Lea Millay * Romantic Entreaty in A Kagerô Diary and The Letters of Abelard and Heloise--John R. Wallace * Words Alone Cannot Express: Epistles in Marie de France and Murasaki Shikibu--Cynthia Ho * ‘True Lovers’: Love and Irony in Murasaki Shikibu and Christine de Pizan--Carol E. Harding * Reclaiming the Self Through Silence: The Riverside Counselor’s Stories and the Lais of Marie de France--Marco D. Roman * The Lady in the Garden: Subjects and Objects in an Ideal World--Mara Miller
