The discourse of enclosure
Subtitle: representing women in Old English literature
By: by Shari Horner.
Series: SUNY series in medieval studies
Publisher: State University of New York Press; State Univ of New York Pr
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 207
Subjects: English literature -- Old English, ca. 450-1100 -- History and criticism.; Women and literature -- England -- History -- To 1500.; Feminism and literature -- England -- History -- To 1500.; Women -- England -- History -- Middle Ages, 500-1500.; Enclosure (Monasticism); Women in literature.
Description: "Exploring Old English texts ranging from Beowulf to Aelfric's Lives of Saints, this book examines ways that women's monastic, material, and devotional practices in Anglo-Saxon England shaped literary representations of women and femininity. Horner argues that these representations derive from a "discourse" of female monastic enclosure, based on the increasingly strict rules of cloistered confinement that regulated the female religious body in the early Middle Ages.

She shows that the female subjects of much Old English literature are enclosed by many layers - literal and figurative, textual, material, discursive, and spatial - all of which image and reinforce the powerful institutions imposed by the Church on the female body.

Though it has long been recognized that medieval religious women were enclosed, and that virginity was highly valued, this book is the first to consider the interrelationships of these two positions - that is, how the material practices of female monasticism inform the textual operations of Old English literature."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-202) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Acknowledgments Dedication Introduction The Discourse of Enclosure:; title: Inscribing the Feminine in Old English Literature Chapter One Looking Into Enclosure in the; title: Old English Female Lyrics Chapter Two Voices From the Margins:; title: Women and Textual Enclosure in Beowulf Chapter Three Textual/Sexual Violence:; title: The Old English Juliana and the Anglo-Saxon Female Reader Chapter Four Bodies and Borders: The Hermeneutics of; title: Enclosure in Elfric's lives of Female Saints Conclusion Christina of Markyate and Legacies of Enclosure Bibliography Index.