Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature

Book excerpt: Medievalists demonstrate how a focus on gender can transform an approach to literary texts and genres. The essays in this annual English Association volume provide useful examples of how the conventions behind and the expectations evoked by literary modes and genres help to shape what purports to be an entirely essential and/or socially constructed aspect of identity of the 'he', 'she', or 'I' of the literary text. Ranging across materials from Old English Biblical poetry and hagiography to the late Middle English romances and fabliaux, the essays are united by a commitment to a variety of traditional scholarly methodologies. But each examines afresh an important aspect of what it means to be man or women, husband, son, mother, daughter, wife, devotee or love in the context of particular kinds of medieval literary texts. Contributors ANNE MARIE D'ARCY, HUGH MAGENNIS, DAVID SALTER, MARY SWAN, ELAINE TREHARNE, GREG WALKER.