New book chapter by Rhianydd Hallas

The book presents studies on geographically and culturally diverse women: from Mirabai, an Indian mystic, to Japanese women writers and Korean Kisaeng Sijo poets; from female saints in Christianity and Islam to the Welsh gwraig llwyn a pherth (lit. women of bush and brake, prostitutes).

Rhianydd’s chapter, titled Mary and Elizabeth: Male Perspectives of Female-Coded Piety in Offices for the Visitation, focuses on the liturgical offices composed for the Visitation at the end of the fourteenth century by Adam Easton and Jan of Jenštejn. The chapter examines the female, and particularly Marian, influences within their lives and their responses through the composition of their offices to give an insight into two male composers’ understanding of female-coded piety as present within the Visitation. It demonstrates that both men recognised that the Visitation filled a lacuna within formalised Marian devotion, and that their texts evidence their understanding of the Visitation as a female-only space, inviting the audience as witnesses and guests into the scene which encompasses both religious virtue and maternal aspects. While Jenštejn carefully constructed his office to appeal to Mary for aid, Easton presents Elizabeth as an example of how to behave as a Christian.

Other chapters within the book which focus on Central European issues are Michel de Dobbeleer’s The Genre of the Late Medieval Personalised Orthodox Slavic Women’s Miscellany: Three ‘Existential’ Questions and Renáta Modráková’s Speaking Internationally in Female Communities on the Eastern Borders of Medieval Europe.

For a full contents, see: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843846567/womens-literary-cultures-in-the-global-middle-ages/