Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture c. 1150-1300: Virginity and Its Authorizations

Modern Language Review, The, July, 2003 by Judith Weiss

Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture c. 1150-1300: Virginity and its Authorizations. By JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2001. xvi 314 pp. 55 [pounds sterling]. ISBN: 0-19-811279-3.

At the end of her book Jocelyn Wogan-Browne modestly says it has merely 'scratched the surface' of her subject and calls attention to the careful wording of her title: 'literary culture' rather than 'literary history' because much more research is needed to provide the 'securely documentable and arguable' rather than a mere 'sense of the possible and probable'. While her second statement is incontrovertible, her modesty belies a formidably documented, meticulously researched book, full of helpful information for specialists and non-specialists alike.

Her subject is the literary activities of women in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: those women who composed and copied, those who read and listened, those who were patrons and commissioners of texts. Since the lives of saints form the genre most popular in extant women's writing of the period, it is these which receive most critical attention. Women's writing in these centuries has been virtually ignored; Wogan-Browne has over many years been one of the few sources of articles on it. It is good to see her draw together the strands of her own and others' research while exploring a potentially rich area further.

She is interested in both texts and contexts, so while there are some penetrating and persuasive interpretations of the literature, they are always grounded in the backgrounds producing it. The saints' Lives associated with two major female communities, Campsey Priory and Barking Abbey, are read as rejecting the concerns of these communities and of their wider audiences, including those of aristocratic patrons such as Isabella Countess of Arundel, who perhaps commissioned the Campsey manuscript, containing the largest extant compilation of Anglo-Norman Lives. Many of the saints are virgins, and Wogan-Browne provides a fascinating account of attitudes towards virginity, both actual and 'honorary' (for it could be recuperated). It was a state highly valued and yet difficult to keep, in the face of the pressures on the nobly born to marry. One of the most enjoyable chapters in this book looks at the passio of virgin martyr vs. pagan tyrant and how her resistance could be read subversively, as a woman resisting Christian patriarchy and male authority, and in the case of Clemence of Barking's St Catharine, resisting with an impressive grounding in the ideas of St Anselm.

Wogan-Browne's demolition of long-established but ultimately untenable views is also welcome: Eileen Power's on the 'failing' culture of insular nunneries compared with those of the Low Countries, Tolkien's on the West Midlands as an outpost of native resistance to the Conquest when, in fact, French and Flemish was used there as much as English, and French texts may very well have influenced those in the Katherine Group. Her constant reminders of the connections and continuities between Latin, Anglo-Norman, and English are very necessary: still today, in her words, too many critics write 'as if medieval culture were monoglot'.

The text, let alone the footnotes, is packed with details. The only, mild, criticism I have is that the details can sometimes be overwhelming. Sometimes the argument of a page or a paragraph disappears under their weight; just occasionally it appears as if there has not been enough time to check them (pp. 149-50: Marguerite of Hainault and Flanders, d. 1280, cannot have been the daughter of Marie de Champagne, who was married in 1162; Henry II was not the stepson of Adeliza of Louvain). At such moments the overall control of the argument slips; but the habit of prefacing each chapter with a summary of the principal ideas it contains is invaluable in keeping the reader from losing her way.

Wogan-Browne concludes with an impassioned plea for more research along some of the many lines she has suggested. Indeed, not the least of this book's virtues is the help and stimulation it should give to graduate students in this field. For the rest of us, it supplies a mine of information on one's bookshelf, to consult for a long time to come.

JUDITH WEISS ROBINSON COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE