Initiates a wider development of inquiries into women's literary cultures to move the reader beyond single geographical, linguistic, cultural and period boundaries.Since the closing decades of the twentieth century, medieval women's writing has been the subject of energetic conversation and debate. This interest, however, has focused predominantly on western European writers working within the Christian tradition: the Saxon visionaries, Mechthild of Hackeborn, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Gertrude the Great, for example, and, in England, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe are cases in point. While this present book acknowledges the huge importance of such writers to women's literary history, it also argues that they should no longer be read solely within a local context. Instead, by putting them into conversation with other literary women and their cultures from wider geographical regions and global cultures - women from eastern Europe and their books, dramas and music; the Welsh gwraig llwyn a pherth (woman of bush and brake); the Indian mystic, Mirabai; Japanese women writers from the Heian period; women saints from across Christian Europe and those of eleventh-century Islam or late medieval Ethiopia; for instance - much more is to be gained in terms of our understanding of the drivers behind and expressions of medieval women's literary activities in far broader contexts. This volume considers the dialogue, synergies, contracts and resonances emerging from such new alignments, and to help a wider, multidirectional development of this enquiry into women's literary cultures.

ForewordDiane Watt AcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: Medieval Women's Literary Cultures and Thinking Beyond the LocalLiz Herbert McAvoy and Sue Niebrzydowski PART 1: Comparison and Dialogue1. Speaking Across the Stars: Parallel Affective Communities in Islamic and Christian HagiographyAyoush Lazikani 2. Women's Mystical Friendships: Margery Kempe and MirabaiAlexandra Verini3. Women's Writing in the Japanese Heian Period: A Medieval Dialogue between the East and WestNaoë Kukita Yoshikawa PART 2: Constructing Gender and Genre4. The Genre of the Late Medieval Personalised Orthodox Slavic Women's Miscellany: Three 'Existential' QuestionsMichel de Dobbeleer 5. The Role of Kisaeng Sijo Poets in Medieval Korean LiteratureKo Jeong-hee and Justin M. Byron-Davies 6. Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya: Gender, Authority and Paradox in Attar's Tadhkirat al-'awliya and the Mantiq al-tayrShazia Jagot 7. Deception, Infanticide, and the Making of a Female Saint: A Look at the Gädl Kr¿stos SämraMeron T. Gebreananaye PART 3: Saintly Performance and Marian Piety8. 'Of our Lady thassumpcion': A European Context for the Worshipful Wives of Chester and their Marian PlaySue Niebrzydowski 9. Mary and Elizabeth: Male Perspectives of Female-Coded Piety in Offices for the VisitationRhianydd Hallas 10. Speaking Internationally in Female Communities on the Eastern Borders of Medieval EuropeRenáta Modráková 11. Textual Phantoms and Spectral Presences: The Coming to Rest of Mechthild of Hackeborn's Writing in the Late Middle AgesLiz Herbert McAvoy 12. Negotiating the Abject and the Sublime: The Centrality of Discourse Communities within Women's Mystical ExperienceKathryn Loveridge PART 4: Evidence and the Archives: Revisiting and Reconsidering13. 'Ic þæt secgan mæg': Women, Song, Story, PresenceElaine Treharne 14. In the Undergrowth: Llwyn a Pherth and Sexual Deviancy in Medieval WalesCeridwen Lloyd-Morgan and Sara Elin Roberts 15. 'I shall send yw money to by such stufe as I wull haue': The Paston ShoppersVicki Kay PriceAfterword: Intersectionality and CoalitionsJonathan HsyList of ContributorsBibliography