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Schedule of Classes
Week 1: Introduction (BM).
Week 2: What is Sex, Gender, Culture? (BM, SS)
This class will examine how the terms, ‘sex’, ‘sexuality’, ‘gender’ and ‘culture’, are used and
understood critically. This is a discussion that will continue throughout this course (and after)
but it is important to be aware of critical and theoretical issues as we begin our work.
Judith Butler, ‘Imitation and Gender Subordination’, in The Lesbian and Gay Studies
Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale and David Halperin
(Routledge, 1993), pp. 307-20.
Karma Lochrie, ‘Introduction’, Heterosyncracies: Female Sexuality When Normal
Wasn’t (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), pp. xi-xxviii
Pasternack, Carol Braun and Lisa H. Weston, eds., Sex and Sexuality in AngloSaxon England (Tempe, Arizona, 2004). Introduction.
Week 3: Genesis and the Anglo-Saxons (tba)
The class will consider the creation and fall stories of Genesis and their Old English reflexes
in the two poems of Genesis A and Genesis B. It will examine how sacred texts resource
early medieval literary culture and explore how notions of gender, sexuality and sin shape the
reception of this key scriptural text in Anglo-Saxon culture.
‘Ælfric’s Old English Preface to the Translation of Genesis,’ Ælfric’s Prefaces, ed.
and trans., Jonathan Wilcox (Durham Medieval Texts, 1994)
‘A Translator’s Problems’ [Ælfric’s Preface to his Translation of Genesis], The
Cambridge Old English Reader, ed. Richard Marsden (Cambridge University
Press, 2004), pp 122-9.
A. N. Doane, ed. and trans., The Saxon Genesis: An Edition of the West Saxon
Genesis B and the Old Saxon Vatican Genesis (University of Wisconsin
Press, 1991)
A. N. Doane, ed. and trans., Genesis A: A New Edition (University of Wisconsin
Press, 1978)
Genesis A and Genesis B, transl. as Genesis by S. A. J. Bradley, Anglo-Saxon
Poetry (Everyman, 1982)
Janet S. Erickson, ‘Penitential Nakedness and the Junius 11 Genesis’, Naked before
God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Benjamin C. Withers
and Jonathan Wilcox (West Virginia University Press, 2003), pp. 257-74
Mark Griffith, ‘Ælfric's Preface to Genesis: Genre, Rhetoric and the Origins of the Ars
dictaminis’, Anglo-Saxon England 29 (2000): 215-34.
Gillian R. Overing, ‘On Reading Eve: Genesis B and the Reader’s Desire’, Speaking
Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in
Medieval Studies, ed. Allen J. Frantzen (SUNY Press, 1991), pp. 35-64
Robert Stanton, The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England (Brewer, 2002)
What are the issues at stake in translating sacred texts into vernacular works?
What inter-cultural and cross-cultural issues are relevant to the making of the two
poems of Genesis A and Genesis B?
How do narratives of creation and fall produce stories about sex, sexuality and
desire?
How are narratives of creation and fall gendered?
Week 4: Genesis in Middle English Drama (SS)
In late medieval vernacular culture the Bible was viewed and performed more than it was
read. This class examines how Biblical depictions of sex, gender and desire translate to latemedieval performance.
York Plays 3-6, 9, 12-13: photocopies from The York Plays, ed. Richard Beadle,
EETS ss 23 (Oxford University Press, 2009) will be provided.
M. D. Anderson, Drama and Imagery in Late Medieval Churches (Cambridge
University Press, 1963)
nd
Richard Beadle, ed., Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, 2 edn
(Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Sarah Beckwith, Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus
Christi Plays (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
Ruth Evans, ‘Body Politics: Engendering Medieval Cycle Drama’, in Evans and
Lesley Johnson, eds, Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature
(Routledge, 1994)
Ruth Evans, ‘Signs of the Body: Gender, Sexuality and Space in York and the York
Cycle’, in Virginia Chieffo Raguin and Sarah Stanbury, eds, Women’s Space:
Patronage, Place and Gender in the Medieval Church (SUNY Press, 2005)
Christina M. Fitzgerald, The Drama of Masculinity and Medieval English Guild Culture
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
P. J. P. Goldberg, ‘Performing the Word of God: Corpus Christi Drama in the
Northern Province’, in Diane Wood, ed., Life and Thought in the Northern
Church, Studies in Church History, Ecclesiastical History Society, Subsidia,
12 (1999), pp. 145–70
Eric Jager, The Tempter’s Voice: Language and the Fall in Medieval Literature
(Cornell University Press, 1993)
Mervyn James, ‘Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval Town’, Past and
Present 98 (1983): 3–29
Pamela M. King, The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City (Boydell and
Brewer, 2006)
Emma Lipton, Affections of the Mind: The Politics of Sacramental Marriage in Late
Medieval English Literature (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007)
Brian Murdoch, The Medieval Popular Bible: Expansions of Genesis in the Middle
Ages (Brewer, 2003)
Katie Normington, Gender and Medieval Drama (Brewer, 2004)
Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent (Penguin, 1990)
rd
Glynne Wickham, Medieval Theatre, 3 edn (Cambridge University Press, 1987)
How do the plays adapt the Biblical text?
What do they say about marriage, sex, gender?
How might the historical circumstances of the plays affect the depiction of gender?
How do they compare to the Old English adaptation?
What is the effect of performance; does it matter whether the women’s parts were
performed by men?
How does the Fall inform the plays of Noah and of the Annunciation?
How does visual culture influence drama and vice versa?
How do the plays understand and produce temporality?
Week 5: The Genesis of Sodom (BM)
This class will use the Genesis story of the destruction of Sodom as a case study for
considering issues of interlingual, intermedial and intercultural translation.
The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: British Museum Cotton Claudius B.IV, ed.
C.R. Dodwell & Peter Clemoes, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 18
(Allen & Unwin, 1974).
Cleanness, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, ed. J. J.
Anderson (J.M. Dent, 1996), pp. 47–137.
Bible moralisée (Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 2554 text-image dossier).
Allen J. Frantzen, Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from Beowulf to Angels in
America (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
M. R. Godden, ‘The Trouble with Sodom: Literary Responses to Biblical Sexuality’,
Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 77 (1996): 97–119.
Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (University of
Chicago Press, 1997).
Elizabeth B. Keiser, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia: The Legitimation of
Sexual Pleasure in Cleanness and its Contexts (Yale University Press, 1997)
Karma Lochrie, ‘Presumptive Sodomy and its Exclusions,’ Textual Practice 13.2
(1999): 295–310.
How is sodomy gendered in these examples?
How do the meanings of the Genesis story of Sodom, and its roles in different
discourses, change from one example to the next?
Is there a difference between visual and verbal appropriations of the story?
How useful is ‘cultural translation’ as a model for approaching these differences?
Week 6: Making Margery (BM)
Against the odds, Margery Kempe appears to have ‘made it’ into the canon of Middle English
texts that feature regularly on university syllabi. There’s even a Norton edition of her Book.
Engaging with the Book’s own rhetorical strategies aimed at securing its subject’s sanctity,
this class will consider the issues at stake in this apparent, progressive ‘canonization’ of
Margery in modern criticism and pedagogy.
John Arnold and Katherine Lewis, eds, A Companion to The Book of Margery Kempe
(D.S. Brewer, 2004).
Kathleen Ashley, ‘Historicizing Margery: The Book of Margery Kempe as Social Text’,
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998): 371–88.
Nancy Bradley Warren, ‘Feminist Approaches to Middle English Religious Writing:
The Cases of Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich’, Literature Compass 4.5
(2007): 1378–1396.
Wallace, David. ‘Periodizing Women: Mary Ward (1585–1645) and the Premodern
Canon’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 36.2 (2006): 397–453.
Watt, Diane, Medieval Women’s Writing (Polity, 2007).
How and why did Margery win her place in the canon of English women’s writings? Is
this role secure?
What role has feminism played in this (re)habilitation?
How useful is the language of ‘margin’ and ‘centre’ as a means of confronting the
Book’s canonicity?
Week 7: READING WEEK
Week 8: Testing the ‘Bynum Thesis’ (SS)
Caroline Walker Bynum synthesised anthropology, women’s history and religious history into
an account of gender in medieval religion which influenced a generation of scholarship. But
does it work?
Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Late Middle
Ages’, in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays in Gender and the Human
Body in Medieval Religion (Zone Books, 1991)
The Book of Margery Kempe: Annotated Edition, ed. Barry Windeatt (Brewer, 2000;
repr. 2004)
David Aers, ‘The Humanity of Christ: Reflections on Orthodox Late Medieval
Representations’, in Aers and Lynn Staley, Powers of the Holy: Religion,
Politics and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture (Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1996)
Kathleen Biddick, ‘Genders, Borders, Bodies: Technologies of the Visual’, Speculum
68.2 (1993): 389–418
Amy Hollywood, ‘Beatrice of Nazareth and her Hagiographers’, in Catherine Mooney,
ed., Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and their Interpreters (University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1999)
Nicholas Watson, ‘Desire for the Past’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21 (1999): 59–
98
Karma Lochrie, ‘Mystical Acts, Queer Tendencies’, in Lochrie, Peggy McCracken and
James A. Schultz, eds, Constructing Medieval Sexuality (University of
Minnesota Press, 1997)
What characteristics does Bynum discover in medieval women’s piety?
Is the model internally coherent? Does it impose coherence on its subjects?
What are the theoretical and historical challenges to it?
Does Bynum’s model account satisfactorily for the piety of Margery Kempe?
Week 9: Editing Margery (BM)
This session will discuss editorial practice. Taking the Book of Margery Kempe as a case
study, discussion will focus on the Book’s manuscript context, the early printed extracts by
Wynkyn de Worde and Henry Pepwell, and a number of modern editions. Issues discussed
will include the role of the scribe, editorial practice, gender and editing, the functions of textual
apparatus, translations, and the changing readership for the text. Versions under discussion
may include:
‘A short treatise of contemplation taught by Our Lord Jesus Christ, or taken out of the
book of Margery Kempe, ancress of Lynn,’ in The Cell of SelfKnowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises Printed by Henry Pepwell
in 1521, ed. with Edmund Gardner (Chatto & Windus, 1910).
The Book of Margery Kempe: Annotated Edition, ed. Barry Windeatt (Brewer, 2000;
repr. 2004). [Don’t confuse this with Windeatt’s Penguin translation!]
The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Lynn Staley, TEAMS Middle English Texts
(Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996). [Online version
available by following links at www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/tmsmenu.htm]
The Book of Margery Kempe, trans. and ed. Lynn Staley, Norton Critical Edition
(Norton, 2001)
The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen, Early
English Text Society original series 212 (Oxford University Press, 1940).
The Book of Margery Kempe: An Abridged Translation, trans. Liz Herbert McAvoy
(Brewer, 2003)
Marea Mitchell, The Book of Margery Kempe: Scholarship, Community and Criticism
(Peter Lang, 2005)
What are the benefits and drawbacks of different editions of the Book of Margery
Kempe?
What critical apparatus (including any statements of editorial practice) is provided in
each edition, and why?
What views of Margery Kempe are constructed by each edition?
How would you ideally present the text in edited form?
Week 10: Margery and Sanctity (SS)
This class will use the Book of Margery Kempe to explore how concepts of sanctity and
community inform our understanding of female devotional practices in general and of
Margery’s spirituality in particular.
The Book of Margery Kempe: Annotated Edition, ed. Barry Windeatt (Brewer, 2000;
repr. 2004)
D. H. Farmer, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford University Press, 1992)
Gail McMurray Gibson, Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the
Late Middle Ages (University of Chicago Press, 1989), ch. 3
Marion Glasscoe, ed. The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England (Brewer, 1984)
Kathy Lavezzo, ‘Sobs and Sighs between Women: The Homoerotics of Compassion’,
Premodern Sexualities, ed. Louise Fradenburg and Carla Freccero
(Routledge, 1996), pp. 175-98
Katherine Lewis, The Cult of Saint Katherine of Alexandria in Late Medieval England
(Brewer, 2000), pp. 242-56
Sarah Salih, Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval England (Brewer, 2001), ch. 5
André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge
University Press, 1997)
Diane Watt, ‘Political Prophecy in The Book of Margery Kempe’, A Companion
to The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. John H. Arnold and Katherine J.
Lewis (Brewer, 2004), pp. 145-60
Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: the Two Worlds of
Western Christendom 1000-1700 (University of Chicago Press, 1982)
How is sanctity performed?
Which medieval saints does Margery admire and emulate in her spiritual practices?
How does gender and sexuality inform concepts of community, whether secular or
sacred?
How are the living, the dead and the divine brought into (or exiled from) the
community of the Church?
Week 11: Margeries of Modernity (SS)
Present-day scholarship not only places Margery, previously dismissed as a minor or failed
mystic, in the centre of Middle English culture, but also sees her as a figure with a particular
address to the present.
The Book of Margery Kempe: Annotated Edition, ed. Barry Windeatt (Brewer, 2000;
repr. 2004)
Carolyn Dinshaw, Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and
Postmodern (Duke University Press, 1999), ch. 3
Forum on Getting Medieval in Journal of the History of Sexuality 10.2 (2001)
Sarah Salih, ‘Julian’s Afterlives’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy, ed., A Companion to Julian of
Norwich (Boydell and Brewer, 2008)
Diane Watt, ‘Critics, Communities, Compassionate Criticism: Learning from The Book
of Margery Kempe’, in Louise d’Arcens and Juanita Feros Ruys, eds,
Maistresse of My Wit: Medieval Women, Modern Scholars (Brepols, 2004)
What rhetorical and theoretical moves do critics make to contemporise Margery
Kempe?
What objections can be made to these moves?
How does Margery Kempe’s present-day constituency compare to that of Julian of
Norwich?