7. Mystical Literacy: Writing and Religious Women in Late Medieval Italy

Abstract

Scholarship has still not settled on an answer to the question as to whether Catherine could write. Nor has asked a more important question, one that emerges when pondering women like Francesca who rejected writing as a demonic incursion into their quiet and submissive lives: how to account for Catherine's fascination with the transmission of her words - and at times with the possibility of producing texts by her own hand in the vernacular? What difference did literacy make to Catherine and her female contemporaries? The remarks presented in this chapter reflects how Catherine straddled oral and literate cultures, as she at once championed the force of the spoken word and sought to extend - and alter - the ephemeral moment of orality, when the word, once it leaves the mouth, is no more. Keywords:Catherine; Francesca

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