The twelfth century witnessed the birth of modern Western European literary tradition: major narrative works appeared in both French and in German, founding a literary culture independent of the Latin tradition of the Church and Roman Antiquity. But what gave rise to the sudden interest in and legitimization of literature in these “vulgar tongues"? Until now, the answer has centred on the somewhat nebulous role of new female vernacular readers. Powell argues that a different appraisal of the same evidence offers a window onto something more momentous: not “women readers” but instead a reading act conceived of as female lies behind the polysemic identification of women as the audience of new media in the twelfth century. This woman is at the centre of a re-conception of Christian knowing, a veritable revolution in the mediation of knowledge and truth. By following this figure through detailed readings of key early works, Powell unveils a surprise, a new poetics of the body meant to embrace the capacities of new audiences and viewers of medieval literature and visual art.
- Front Cover
- Front matter
- Half-title
- Series information
- Title page
- Copyright information
- Dedication
- Table of contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Body
- Introduction
- Part One. Reading as sponsa et mater
- Chapter 1. Mutations of the Reading Woman
- Pucele and Sinnec wîp
- Readers and Representations
- Reading, Gnosis, and the “Weak Sex”
- Sicut mulier legit psalterium: Women as Illiterates
- Litterata, deo cultrix: Woman as Mirror of Lay Devotion
- Hildegard’s Persona and the Psalter-Literate Woman
- Chapter 2. Reading as Mary Did
- The Annunciation as a Reading Moment
- Mary’s Reading and the Song of Songs
- Reading as Mary Did: The De incarnatione Domini of Rupert of Deutz
- Reading as the Bride Embodied: Hildegard and Her “Publicists”
- Chapter 3. Constructing the Woman’s Mirror
- The Speculum virginum
- The Woman in the Mirror: Listening as Adulescentula
- The Woman in the Mirror: Reading as nova ooliba
- A Female Poetics of Body and Truth
- Chapter 4. Seeking the Reader/Viewer of the St Albans Psalter
- St Albans, a Psalter, a Life
- Pictures, Sacra historia, and Reading as Mary Did
- A Female Gaze and Women’s Vision
- Alexis Recognized
- Enter the Widowed Bride
- The Mediatrix and Her Last Gifts
- Part Two. Reading the Widowed Bride
- Chapter 5. Quae est ista, quae ascendit? (Canticles 3:6)
- En romans traire: Translating Reading Experience
- Riche dame de riche rei? Eleanor of Aquitaine and Le Roman de Troie
- Translating Scripture for Ma dame de Champaigne
- Chapter 6. Ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus mihi (Canticles 6:2)
- Espeuse and Damoisele: the Song of Songs en romans
- Lambert of Ardres, the Counts of Guines, and the Mutations of Lay Literary Identity
- Reading as the New Eve—en romans
- Mutations of the Old Eve: Reading Woman as History
- Chapter 7. A New Poetics for Âventiure
- Reading Women False and True: The Cleric’s Instruction
- Reading Women False and True: The Knight’s Narration
- Lactans Dolorosa: Herzeloyde and Mary’s Reading
- The Layman’s Key to Peter’s Gate
- Chapter 8. The Heart, the Wound, and the Word— Sacred and Profane
- The Advent of Âventiure and the Reconception of the Word
- Ist iemen dinne? (Is Anybody There?)
- Reading the Widow
- Yvain and the “tres bele crestïenne”
- Sigune’s Reading
- Conclusion
- Back matter
- Appendix: The Prologue to Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival1
- Works Cited
- Primary Texts and Translations
- Secondary Literature
- Index
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