Writing gender and genre in medieval literature

the long version

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 woman, husband, son, mother, daughter, wife, devotee or lover in the context of particular kinds of medieval literary texts.--Jacket.