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Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture Authorship and Authority in a Female Community BA-final.indd 1 25/09/2012 14:22:51 YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for Medi- eval Studies in association with Boydell & Brewer Limited. Our objective is the promotion of innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval cul- ture. We have a special commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre’s belief that the future of Medieval Studies lies in those areas in which its major constituent disciplines at once inform and challenge each other. Editorial Board (2012) Professor Peter Biller (Dept of History): General Editor Dr T. Ayers (Dept of History of Art) Dr J. W. Binns (Dept of English and Related Literature) Professor Helen Fulton (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr K. F. Giles (Dept of Archaeology) Professor Christopher Norton (Dept of History of Art) Professor W. M. Ormrod (Dept of History) Professor J. G. Wogan-Browne (English Faculty, Fordham University) Consultant on Manuscript Publications Professor Linne Mooney (Dept of English and Related Literature) All enquiries of an editorial kind, including suggestions for monographs and essay collections, should be addressed to: The Academic Editor, York Medi- eval Press, University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, The King’s Manor, York, YO1 7EP (E-mail: [email protected]). Publications of York Medieval Press are listed at the back of this volume. BA-final.indd 2 25/09/2012 14:22:51 Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture Authorship and Authority in a Female Community Edited by Jennifer N. Brown and Donna Alfano Bussell YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS BA-final.indd 3 25/09/2012 14:22:51 © Contributors 2012 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2012 A York Medieval Press publication in association with The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9 Woodbridge Suffolk IP12 3DF UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com and with the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York ISBN 978 1 903153 43 7 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. Typeset by Word and Page, Chester Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY BA-final.indd 4 25/09/2012 14:22:51 CONTENTS List of Contributors vii Acknowledgements x List of Abbreviations xi Introduction: Barking’s Lives, the Abbey and its Abbesses 1 Donna Alfano Bussell with Jennifer N. Brown I. barking abbey and its anglo-saxon context 1. Barking’s Monastic School, Late Seventh to Twelfth Century: History, Saint-Making and Literary Culture 33 Stephanie Hollis 2. The Saint-Maker and the Saint: Hildelith Creates Ethelburg 56 Lisa M. C. Weston 3. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and the Translation Ceremony for Saints Ethelburg, Hildelith and Wulfhild 73 Kay Slocum 4. ‘The ladies have made me quite fat’: Authors and Patrons at Barking Abbey 94 Thomas O’Donnell II. barking abbey and its anglo-norman context 5. ‘Sun num n’i vult dire a ore’: Identity Matters at Barking Abbey 117 Delbert Russell 6. ‘Ce qu’ens li trovat, eut en sei’: On the Equal Chastity of Queen Edith and King Edward in the Nun of Barking’s La Vie d’Edouard le confesseur 135 Thelma Fenster 7. Body, Gender and Nation in the Lives of Edward the Confessor 145 Jennifer N. Brown BA-final.indd 5 25/09/2012 14:22:51 8. Clemence and Catherine: The Life of St Catherine in its Norman and Anglo-Norman Context 164 Diane Auslander 9. Cicero, Aelred and Guernes: The Politics of Love in Clemence of Barking’s Catherine 183 Donna Alfano Bussell 10. The Authority of Diversity: Communal Patronage in Le Gracial 210 Emma Bérat III. barking abbey and the later middle ages 11. Keeping Body and Soul Together: The Charge to the Barking Cellaress 235 Alexandra Barratt 12. Rhythmic Liturgy, Embodiment and Female Authority in Barking’s Easter Plays 245 Jill Stevenson 13. Liturgy as the Site of Creative Engagement Contributions of the Nuns of Barking 267 Anne Bagnall Yardley Afterword. Barking and the Historiography of Female Community 283 Jocelyn Wogan-Browne Bibliography 297 Index 325 vi BA-final.indd 6 25/09/2012 14:22:51 CONTRIBUTORS Diane Peters Auslander recently received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has published several articles and book chapters on saints and saints cults in the British Isles. She is currently teaching medieval history and women’s history at Lehman College, City Uni- versity of New York. Alexandra Barratt is Professor Emeritus at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She has worked for many years in the area of medieval texts for and by women. Her most recent monograph is Anne Bulkeley and her Book: Fash- ioning Female Piety in Early Tudor England (Brepols, 2009). In retirement she continues her work on the fifteenth-century English translator Dame Eleanor Hull, and has recently developed an interest in medieval manuscript waste in early printed books held in New Zealand Jennifer N. Brown is an Associate Professor of English and World Literature at Marymount Manhattan College. She has published widely on women and women’s writing in the Middle Ages, including the book Three Women of Liège: A Critical Edition of and Commentary on the Middle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie of Oignies (Brepols, 2008). Her 2011 article in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, ‘The Chaste Erotics of Marie d’Oignies and Jacques de Vitry’, won the 2011 prize for Best Article of Feminist Scholarship on the Middle Ages, given biannually by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship. Emma Bérat is a doctoral candidate in the English and Comparative Literature department at Columbia University. Her interests include multiculturalism, historiography and women’s literary culture in the high Middle Ages. Previ- ously she has published on the relationship between clerk and female patron in Geoffrey Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis. Donna Alfano Bussell is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Springfield. Her research focuses on women’s participation in literary culture and depictions of women’s influence in liturgy and devotional texts. Publications include ‘The Fantasy of Reciprocity and the Enigma of the Sene- schal in Marie de France’s Equitan’, Le Cygne: Journal of the International Marie de France Society 2 (2003), 7-48, and ‘Heloise Redressed: Rhetorical Engagement and the Benedictine Rite of Initiation in Heloise’s Third Letter’, in Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth Century Woman, ed. B. Wheeler (New York, 2000). Forthcoming publications include a translation of the Anglo-Norman vii BA-final.indd 7 25/09/2012 14:22:51 Prologue of Adgar’s Gracial in Vernacular Literary Theory and Practices: The French of England 1130-1450, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Thelma Fenster and Delbert Russell (Pennsylvania State University Press) and ‘Challenging Cluny in England: The Magdalene Liturgies at Lewes and Pontefract’, in Mary Mag- dalene in Medieval Culture: Conflicted Roles, ed. Peter Loewen and Robin Waugh (Routledge Press). Thelma Fenster, Professor Emerita, French and Medieval Studies, Fordham University, has published on Christine de Pizan, the medieval workings of fama, Arthurian women and gender. With Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, she co- directs the French of England Project and has translated works by Matthew Paris. She is currently collaborating on a large anthology of literary prologues in the French of England. Stephanie Hollis is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Auckland, where she was until recently Director of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern European Studies. Her publications include Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Boydell 1992), and Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius (Brepols 2004). She is currently research- ing the literary culture of nunneries founded in the Anglo-Saxon period, and is working with Michael Wright on a translation and study of texts written by Goscelin for Barking Abbey. Thomas O’Donnell is Assistant Professor of English at Fordham University in New York City. Previously he was Lecturer in High Medieval Literature at the University of York. He has published on the English, French and Latin literary cultures of England between the years 975 and 1330, and his current book project explores community writing, networks, and identity in high-medieval English monasteries from before the Conquest until the mid-thirteenth century.. Delbert Russell, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Waterloo, has edited La Vie de s. Laurent (1973), Le Légendier apostolique anglo-normand (1989), La Vie seint Richard de Cycestre (1995), La Vye de seynt Fraunceys (2002). His translation and introduction to four saints’ lives (George, Giles, Faith and Mary Magdalene) is in press (for the French of England in Translation Series, Arizona). He is currently collaborating with Mark Finkelstein on a new edi- tion of Denis Piramus, Vie s. Edmund le rei, and with Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and Thelma Fenster on a critical anthology of medieval French literary theory written in England. Kay Slocum is Emeritus Professor of History and Humanities at Capital Uni- versity. Her publications include Liturgies in Honour of Thomas Becket (Toronto, 2004) and several articles concerning Becket, most recently ‘Martir quod stillat primatis ab ore sigillat: Sealed with the Blood of Becket’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association (2012). Her current research concerns Barking Abbey. Jill Stevenson is an Associate Professor of Theater Arts at Marymount Manhat- tan College. She is the author of Performance, Cognitive Theory, and Devotional viii BA-final.indd 8 25/09/2012 14:22:52

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