Gender, texts and context in the Old English Exeter Book

• Main Author: Nordoff-Perusse, Teresa Kim
• Other Authors: Bray, Dorothy Ann (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 1995
• Subjects: Women and literature
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=23346

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.