| Summary: | An examination of historical and textual evidence supporting the thesis that the tenth-century Old English Exeter Book (Exeter Dean and Chapter MS. 3501) may have been compiled for, or even in, an Anglo-Saxon female monastic foundation or mixed-sex double house. The Exeter Book poems, many with female subjects, have been studied extensively, but rarely treated as components that unite to form a deliberately compiled, cohesive anthology. This study examines four main subjects: women's participation in both Latin and vernacular textual culture in the early Middle Ages in past and present scholarship; the history and structure of the codex; a summary of evidence indicating the possibility of the Exeter Book's production in or for a woman's monastic foundation or a double-house; a survey of the female figures in the Book and the effect of a "gendered" reading on the study of the codex as a unified document.
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