‘Staining the Speech of Things Divine’: The Uses of Literacy in Medieval Beguine Communities

Abstract

This book aims to collect and present the results of research done within the context of the project ‘The voice of silence / La voz del silencio: An interdisciplinary research project about literate women and women authors in the West-European late Middle Ages from a gender perspective (11th to 15th centuries)’. The project was a bilateral research project, with participants of the University of Chile in Santiago on the one hand and the Universities of Gent and Antwerpen on the other. Medieval scholars, literary historians and literary theorists joined forces. The angle from which the material was being studied, however, was always the same: gender being the central issue. The project focused on women as participants in late medieval society and culture of the Rhineland and the Low Countries. Indeed, all the researchers involved acquired their expertise in this field and/or the field of women’s literacy. Several members of this Flemish-Chilean project have contributed an essay to this book, but supplemented by guest authors. The guests are internationally renowned scholars reflecting an expertise in gender studies or in an aspect not covered by the team members of the project. Their contributions complete the research results of the project. The story told in this book is focused on literate women and gender. In the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the voices of women authors, many of them religious and mystics, resounded in a literate society dominated by clerics. Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch, two of the most famous representatives of this ‘female voice’ are highlighted in Part I. These women were the forerunners of a new reading culture among (semi-)religious and even lay women in which the use of the vernacular was a decisive factor (Part II). Yet, from the thirteenth century onwards, and with increasing intensity towards the end of the Middle Ages, men once more tried to get a grip on women’s reading and writing. Aspects of these attemps are illustrated in part III.

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