Conybeare, Catherine

English

Scholarship;  Research;  and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr College
Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr
College
Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies Faculty Research
and Scholarship Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies
2005
Review of Women Writing Latin, from Roman
Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, edited by Laurie J.
Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown, and Jane E. Jeffrey
Catherine Conybeare
Bryn Mawr College, cconybea@brynmawr.edu
Let us know how access to this document benefits you.
Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/classics_pubs
Part of the Classics Commons
This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/classics_pubs/20
For more information, please contact repository@brynmawr.edu.
Custom Citation
Conybeare, Catherine. Review of Women Writing Latin, from Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, edited by Laurie J. Churchill,
Phyllis R. Brown, and Jane E. Jeffrey. Speculum 80 (2005): 540-542.
540 Reviews 
Savoy, instead of the princes (surely an unhappy translation from Livingston's English 
preface). 
Matching line by line, Chenerie retains a good 98 percent of Livingston's text, cleaning 
it up by emending some punctuation, adding roman numerals for numbers instead of writ 
ing them out, removing the f from forms like cou, correcting some capitalized and lower 
case words, sorting the variants, and weighing in with new interpretations at the several 
points in the text where the combined efforts of all editors and reviewers still leave enig 
matic or unhappy lines (1324-27, for example)-and while they may not be conclusive, 
they add to the possibility of solutions. To these minor textual corrections, she adds a new 
apparatus that gives an updated review of the variants in the complex layers of Foerster 
and Muller's redactions and includes the input of Livingston and the five reviewers of his 
text. All this summarizes the possible conjectures regarding Gliglois, but as circumstances 
have lent the romance a more virtual existence than most, it is hard to say if we are any 
closer to the lost original than before-at best we have some more educated guesswork 
and a more grammatically regulated version. Beyond that, Chenerie adds a useful glossary, 
a list of proper names (although in a poem remarkably devoid of intertextual allusions, 
Tristan is missed in the listing of the few there are), plus lively notes that expand on 
Livingston's earlier commentary. In the introduction she provides a short resume of the 
text and updates the language analysis, expanding more fully on morphology, phonetics, 
and versification. She further provides a new "etude litteraire," which once again covers 
some traditional ground but takes stock of existing criticism and goes on to examine Gli 
glois in what Chenerie sees as its relationship to the conte populaire. 
Unusually, reviewing this romance entails dealing much more with the modern editorial 
process than the work itself: this is really a revised, updated, and expanded edition that 
incorporates a genealogy stretching back to the late nineteenth century. Chenerie has pre 
viously published a translation of the work (La legende arthurienne et legraal [Paris, 1989], 
pp. 711-47), and with the Old French now more accessible, it will perhaps excite the 
increased critical interest i deserves. 
CAROLINE JEWERS, University of Kansas 
LAURIE J. CHURCHILL, PHYLLIS R. BROWN, and JANE E. JEFFREY, eds., Women Writing 
Latin, from Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, 1: Women Writing Latin in 
Roman Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and the Early Cbristian Era; 2: Medieval Women 
Writing Latin; 3: Early Modern Women Writing Latin. (Women Writers of the World.) 
New York and London: Routledge, 2002. 1: pp. x, 186. 2: pp. x, 323. 3: pp. x, 298. 
$125 (each vol.). 
The editors of these three volumes, collecting multiple traces of "women writing Latin," 
have taken on an ambitious task. Their brief introduction gives some sense of how ambi 
tious. They are seeking to complicate the image of Latin as "the language of patriarchal 
power" -to show that it was "a language of women as well as of men" (1:1). They wish 
to give "a more complicated understanding of the relationship between Latin literacy and 
the development of the European vernaculars" (1:2). They have made a point of including 
"nonliterary" texts, on the sympathetic grounds that gender bias has led to their being 
defined as irrelevant or subordinate; and, in their quest for women's writing, they have 
been prompted to remold rigid notions of authorship-to include embedded texts, for 
example, or texts produced in collaboration with male scribes (1:3). As one works through 
the volumes, the significance of all this is underplayed, but it is potentially incendiary. The 
cumulative implications are immense. Notions of canonicity and of what counts as worthy 
of examination are called into question. Notions about women's education are expanded 
Reviews 541 
and nuanced (see the excellent observation about Elisabeth of Sch6nau learning Latin by 
immersion: 2:201). Disciplinary divisions are shaken up (look at the energetic reading of 
Hrotsvit as a playwright by someone who has actually directed her work). While it is never 
made explicit, a class-based approach here is just as important as selection by gender. The 
conscientious recovery of diverse women's voices is equally a project of recovering the 
voices of the underclass. 
To each "woman writing Latin" represented in these volumes, her present redactor gives 
an introduction (which varies hugely in length, detail, and degree of engagement with the 
issues raised in the introduction), excerpts from her work in both Latin and English trans 
lation, and a bibliography (again, varying greatly in scope). The editors explain that English 
translations have been included "in order not to perpetuate the exclusivity of Latin liter 
acy," which is laudable; unfortunately, the exclusivity of Anglo-American academic practice 
is all too often perpetuated in the vast preponderance of English-language scholarship in 
most of the bibliographies. 
The volume of most interest to readers of this journal will be volume 2, which covers 
the Middle Ages from Radegund to St. Bride of Sweden; the latter part of volume 1, early 
Christian material from Perpetua to Egeria, will also be of interest. The rest covers Roman 
antiquity and Renaissance and early-modern writers. What are the principles according to 
which the texts have been selected? Why are they sometimes works already well known 
and widely available (Perpetua is a case in point) and sometimes truly novel projects of 
recovery? We never learn. The editors merely note that they did "not include all the Latin 
writings of women or even all the most important women" (1:2). They themselves allude 
to the exclusion of Dhuoda and Gertrude of Helfta. The dedication of the volumes gives 
us no clue, either: they are for "all young women currently studying Latin." These young 
women are, it seems, interested in women's writing for its own sake, not for anything more 
specific or clearly focused. 
I have now used excerpts from these volumes in two seminars, at both undergraduate 
and graduate levels; both, as it happens, were peopled exclusively by young women, who 
were much intrigued by the collection. There is nothing else out there quite like it, and, 
used with care, it is an important teaching tool. 
The material that went over best in class is also, to my mind, the most important con 
tribution of these volumes: the anonymous texts, the inclusion of which should be warmly 
applauded. The little plea from a schoolgirl to her teacher Mistress Felhin (from ninth 
century Saxony); the women's contributions to the twelfth-century mortuary roll from 
Caen; and the wills and documents of dedication from a Catalan convent, Sant Pere de les 
Puelles: all these are fascinating texts, beautifully presented by their modern-day redactors 
(Steven A. Stofferahn, Daniel Sheerin, and Linda McMillin respectively). To them should 
be added the graffiti from Pompeii (Elizabeth Woeckner) and the epigraphic material, 
though this last is less well presented. These texts, of course, speak directly to the issues 
raised in the introduction about which writings are worthy of inclusion, who is doing the 
writing, and how they go about it: my students were quick to see their significance. For all 
the arguments about the importance of the "nonliterary," however, it is disappointing to 
see such material drop out entirely when we reach the Renaissance volume (despite the 
Renaissance rage for epigraphy, for example). This yields, in the end, the conservative 
implication that we should only attend to nonliterary Latin sources when we cannot muster 
sufficient "literary" ones. 
Ironically, the two medieval women whose claims to write truly "literary" Latin are least 
in dispute are ill served in this collection. To represent Heloise through the Problemata, 
rather than the well-worn letters, was an inspiration, but the treatment does not do her 
justice. An introduction chiefly concerned with her Latinity is full of inadequate or erro 
neous observations about syntax and style; the Latin itself, in both text and notes, contains 
542 Reviews 
frequent typesetting errors and is several times mistranslated. As for Hildegard, the treat 
ment of the Latin is fine, but the summary of her life suffers from an unnuanced antipa 
triarchal triumphalism, which does scant justice to her historical situation: the complica 
tions of working simultaneously within and against a dominant tradition are lost. (In this 
context, would that the coercive semantics of Herrad of Hohenbourg's glosses had been 
explored. As it is, they are smoothed over by being "incorporated" into the English 
[2:253].) The overall introduction to the volumes gestures toward subaltern arratives and 
strategies, which form a most pertinent interpretative matrix for this material (1:6-7); but 
we never hear of them again. 
These are volumes of extraordinary range and diversity, and this diversity is their 
strength; but a firmer editorial hand was needed for readers to profit more fully from it. 
There is almost no sense of dialogue between the entries, which is odd in volumes that had 
their genesis in two NEH seminars. (A simple example: in the discussion of Angela No 
garola there is a comment on the "interesting choice" of the cento form. Why is there no 
reference here to the entry on Proba?) The introduction covers fewer than eight pages, a 
troubling proportion of them in others' words (which are not always of obvious relevance); 
the identical introduction is reproduced in each of the three volumes. This means that there 
is no historical overview: no sense of how conditions for literate women might have 
changed over time, of how they might be getting their educations, or of how their conditions 
might relate to other historical trends. (For example, in the Renaissance volume we have 
a regular pattern of very learned, very young women being promoted and put on display 
and-depressingly-an equally regular pattern of their careers being summarily terminated 
in their late twenties; but this passes without comment.) The Latin texts, their translations, 
and comments on their Latinity are sometimes very poor, and for this the editors must bear 
ultimate responsibility. One small but significant example occurs when an Asclepiadic met 
rical schema is transcribed from a sixteenth-century printed edition (3:112). Suor Laurentia 
Strozzi, the writer under discussion, was clearly mistress of this quantitative classical meter: 
she uses it beautifully, including observing the hard caesura in the middle of the line. But 
either her original typesetter or her modern interpreter has made nonsense of the schema 
by joining long syllable markings into single lines of varying length; if the former is re 
sponsible, it passes without comment. 
Ultimately, reading through these volumes was a frustrating enterprise. The collection is 
important, and there are some exceptional entries; but the volumes, taken as a whole, could 
be so much better. I hope there is a second edition; and I hope that, at that stage, extensive 
editorial correction will take place. (I would also strongly recommend including a map of 
Europe, showing the provenances of the writers, who are not usually situated geographi 
cally other than with place-names.) Otherwise, Women Writing Latin will merely reinforce 
the traditional impression of women's writings as secondary and negligible. 
CATHERINE CONYBEARE, Bryn Mawr College 
SANDRINE CLAUDE, Le chateau de Greoux-les-Bains (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence): Une re 
sidence seigneuriale du moyen age a l'epoque moderne. (Documents d'Archeologie 
Franqaise, 80.) Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 2000. Paper. Pp. 187; 151 black 
and-white figures and 2 tables. 
Long left to practitioners of local history, the medieval fortified sites of southeastern Pro 
vence have begun to attract the attention of a growing number of specialists, as evidenced, 
for instance, in recent numbers of the journal L'archeologie du Midi medie'vale. Another 
example of this shift of interest is provided by Sandrine Claude's study of the chateau of 
Greoux-les-Bains, which also provides a good illustration of the methodological approach 


Review of \u3ci\u3eWomen Writing Latin, from Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe\u3c/i\u3e, edited by Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown, and Jane E. Jeffrey

https://repository.brynmawr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&amp;context=classics_pubs

Review of \u3ci\u3eWomen Writing Latin, from Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe\u3c/i\u3e, edited by Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown, and Jane E. Jeffrey

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Scholarship; Research; and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College