Practicing women: the matter of women in medieval England

This essay provides a survey of women in medieval English literature through the lens of the various ways matter signifies for an understanding of the representation of women in literature of the period and their identity as authors. The Aristotelian cultural assumption that women are associated with matter rather than form profoundly influences the ways in which women are represented in medieval literary works. That cultural assumption is unsettled by the changing material conditions of women in late medieval England and even further complicated when women become authorial subjects. Finally, textual representations are materially influenced by the increasingly prominent role women play in the production and consumption of texts