1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996565570103316

Autore

Monagle Clare

Titolo

European Women's Letter-Writing from the 11th to the 20th Centuries

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Amsterdam : , : Amsterdam University Press, , 2023

©2023

ISBN

90-485-5642-2

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (297 pages)

Altri autori (Persone)

JamesCarolyn

GarriochDavid

CaineBarbara

Disciplina

809.6

Soggetti

Letter writing - Europe - History

Women - Europe - Social conditions - History

HISTORY / Medieval

Anthologies

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Authority and the Self: the Letters of Medieval Women -- 2. The Rise of Vernacular Letter-writing -- 3. The Triumph of the Familiar Letter -- 4. Intimate Letters -- Epilogue: Women's Letters come to an End -- Acknowledgements -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

This book reveals the importance of personal letters in the history of European women between the year 1000 and the advent of the telephone. It explores the changing ways that women used correspondence for self-expression and political mobilization over this period, enabling them to navigate the myriad gendered restrictions that limited women's engagement in the world. Whether written from the medieval cloister, or the renaissance court, or the artisan's workshop, or the drawing room, letters crossed geographical and social distance and were mobile in ways that women themselves could not always be. Women wrote to govern, to argue, to plead, and to demand. They also wrote to express love and intimacy, and in so doing, to explain and to understand themselves. This book argues that the personal letter was a crucial place for European women's self-fashioning, and that exploring



the history of their letters offers a profound insight into their subjectivity and agency over time.