A Poor Clare's Legacy: Catherine Magdalen Evelyn and New Directions in Early Modern Women's Literary History

Abstract

This essay seeks to recover the literary legacy of Catherine Magdalen (Elizabeth) Evelyn (1596/7‐1668), an English Poor Clare previously known for her published translations of Franciscan texts. Evelyn also composed an ambitious hagiographical poem in heroic couplets that remains in manuscript: The Life of Blessed Sainte Euphrosina. Comparing this newly discovered poem with Evelyn's translations, this essay explores how Evelyn's writings reflected her self‐identification as a member of the Poor Clares, a religious order associated with rigorous material poverty. Evelyn collaborated with English friars to print translations that polemically asserted the spiritual value of Franciscan poverty, and The Life of Blessed Sainte Euphrosina similarly demonstrates Evelyn's personal commitment to the ideals of her order. Evelyn refashions this crossdressing saint into a proto‐Franciscan exemplar who rejects material wealth and the secular world. As the interplay between Evelyn's vocation and her writings demonstrates, the cloister offers an important new social context for early modern women writers. While nuns have largely remained outside of the canon, the English convents on the Continent fostered the development of distinctive literary voices that can broaden our understanding of women's writings. Indelibly shaped by her chosen identity as a Poor Clare, Evelyn's writings illuminate the ways that monastic literary agendas both complicate and complement existing scholarly narratives about early modern women writers.

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