Medieval Woman's Song

Cross-Cultural Approaches

Anne L. Klinck, Ann Marie Rasmussen, Anne L. Klinck, Ann Marie Rasmussen

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780812236248
  9780812236248
• eBook ISBN:
  9781512803815
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The number of surviving medieval secular poems attributed to named female authors is small, some of the best known being those of the trobairitz the female troubadours of southern France. However, there is a large body of poetry that constructs a particular textual femininity through the use of the female voice. Some of these poems are by men and a few by women (including the trobairitz); many are anonymous, and often the gender of the poet is unresolvable. A "woman's song" in this sense can be defined as a female-voice poem on the subject of love, typically characterized by simple language, sexual candor, and apparent artlessness.The chapters in Medieval Woman's Song bring together scholars in a range of disciplines to examine how both men and women contributed to this art form. Without eschewing consideration of authorship, the collection deliberately overturns the long-standing scholarly practice of treating as separate and distinct entities female-voice lyrics composed by men and those composed by women. What is at stake here is less the voice of women themselves than its cultural and generic construction.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Sappho and Her Daughters: Some Parallels Between Ancient and Medieval Woman's Song
• 2. Ides . . . geomrode giddum: The Old English Female Lament
• 3. Women's Performance of the Lyric Before 1500
• 4. Ca no soe joglaresa: Women and Music in Medieval Spain's Three Cultures
• 5. Feminine Voices in the Galician-Portuguese cantigas de amigo
• 6. Sewing like a Girl: Working Women in the chansons de toile
• 7. Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours
• 8. The Conception of Female Roles in the Woman's Song of Reinmar and the Comtessa de Dia
• 9. Reason and the Female Voice in Walther von der Vogelweide's Poetry
• 10. Ventriloquisms: When Maidens Speak in English Songs, c. 1300–1550
• Notes
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Acknowledgments