Dimensions
130 x 197 x 12mm
Two Exemplary Biographies for Anglo-Norman Women : 'The Life Of St Catherine' and 'The Life Of St Lawrence'.
In Anglo-Norman Britain, women were important consumers and patrons of literature, as well as sometimes composing works themselves. Clemence of Barking is one of the first women writing in England after the Norman Conquest. Her twelfth-century 'Life of St Catherine' - virgin martyr and patron saint of female learning - is here translated for the first time in 800 years.
Hundreds of Latin biographies by medieval clerics exist in which young women saints are put to death. In Clemence's Anglo-Norman narrative, a medieval woman responds to this genre's representation of the torture of women and provides a though-provoking role-model for her own medieval female community and other audiences.
The account of Catherine's passion is complemented by an anonymous life of St Lawrence, object of particular devotion for medieval women in post-Conquest Britain.
With new translations, introduction, notes, bibliography and selected extracts from the original Anglo-Norman texts.
