Episode 15: Women Writers from the Medieval to Post-Modern Periods
October 5, 2023 in Manuscript Studies, Uncategorized
The Research Group Speaks
Episode 15
Saturday 20 January 2024 online
1:00–2:30 pm EST (GMT-5) by Zoom
“Women Writers
from the Medieval to Post-Modern Periods:
Fiction and/or Reality,
from Literary Narratives to Practical Cookery”
Jackie Reed
Linda Civitello
Hannah Goeselt
[Posted on 5 October 2023, with updates. Registration is now open. See below.]
We invite you to attend Episode 15 in our series:
London, British Library, Harley MS 4431, fol. 4r. Christine de Pizan sits and writes, accompanied by a dog.
This time, some scholars, teachers, and writers will speak about their interests, long-term work, and current projects concerned with the writings of women authors across a long span of time. Our focus is primarily “women’s work” of many kinds, which might, of course, include contributions to their genres by men and other authors’ whose identities have become unknown. Our attention is drawn to creativity, resourcefulness, senses of purpose, convictions, and instructions for potentially reproducible results in the fields of Food for Thought and Food itself.
Reflecting womens’ roles, opportunities, constraints, and resourcefulness, the writings cover a wide range of spheres, subjects, approaches, and styles. The works range from literary creations to recipes for cookery. Sometimes they have illustrations of their authors, readers, and authorial or literary occupations.
The “genre” of writings by women authors, often underrated or outright ignored, has multiple manifestations, of course, across many periods of time, cultures, languages, subjects, and points of view. To name a few cases, both Western and Eastern:
- Women Medieval Writers: Women Writers of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation.
- Women Writers in Medieval England
- Category: Women Writers (Medieval)
- Category: Women Writers (Modern Period)
- Category: Women Writers by Historical Period
Christine de Pizan, La cité des dames, in the copy in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Français 1179, folio 3 recto. Image Public Domain via gallica.bnf.fr.
Note on the Image
Headpiece illustration for Christine de Pizan, La cité des dames, in the copy in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Français 1179, folio 3 recto. Image via gallica.bnf.fr.
The Plan
Organized by Jackie Reed, this Episode has reports by, and conversations with, these speakers, who have contributed to RGME events in various ways.
This time, our speakers will describe their interests, long-term work, and current projects concerned with the writings of women authors across a long span of time. The focus attends to some realms ‘traditionally’ occupied by (or allowed for) women’s creativity, ranging from literary works to recipes for cookery. In some cases, as notably with Emily Dickinson, these two ‘worlds’ blend in the form of handwritten manuscripts — recipes and poems included, or indeed blended.
Our Speakers
Jacklyn Reed
Jackie will consider some significant cases of women writers, as she describes the unfolding research for her dissertations (accomplished!) for the M.A. in English Literature and Ph.D. in English Literary Studies, and her continuing work. See, for example, Jackie’s thoughtful and eloquent study of a group of women writers for her Ph.D. dissertation on:
Cases for consideration include
- How to Be Both (2014) by Ali Smith (born 1962)
- Nox by Anne Carson (born 2010). See also Anne Carson: Reading from Nox.
In Jackie’s Words:
Jackie’s talk will focus on how contemporary writers influenced by post-modernism have incorporated manuscript-esque features, such as images, annotations, and structural variations, into printed editions of poetry and fiction.
Works such as Ali Smith’s How to Be Both and Anne Carson’s Nox use these manuscript-esque features to produce reading experiences in which readers confront the nonlinearity of time in their daily lives.
Jackie has contributed to RGME online events in several capacities, as Presenter, Presider, and adept trouble-shooter. For example:
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Linda Civitello (see also Linda Civitello)
For example, drawing among other studies from her book on Cuisine and Culture: A History of People and Food (3rd edition, 2011), Linda will describe womens’ writers contributions to the history of recipes and recipe-books in several extended moments of that history, such as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In Linda’s words:
“Women on the Margins”
Emily Dickinson, “Poems”, First Edition (1890), Front Cover. Image Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Late 18th- and early 19th-century writers were often women living on the margins, a phrase coined by historian Natalie Zemon Davis (1928–2023). They were single women, widows, or women whose husbands or fathers were unable to support the family. These brilliant outspoken women —
- Sarah Josepha Hale (1788–1879)
- Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880)
- Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888)
- Emily Dickinson (1830–1896)
- Florence Nightingale (1820–1910)
— wrote philosophical tracts in novels, poetry, and cookbooks.
“Background Reading” = Some handwritten examples among Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts:
- The Emily Dickinson Collection at Harvard University
- Now You Too can Bake like Emily Dickinson This Holiday Season
- Gathering up the Fragments: Recipe Poems by Emily Dickinson
Linda presented Episode 2 in our series, with a demonstration. See:
London, National Portrait Gallery, Florence Nightengale. Photograph circa 1860 by Henry Hering (1814-1893), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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Hannah Goeselt
“Manuscript Cookbooks Survey” Logo
Hannah will report on a current collaborative project:
Through its website, as it states, “you will find a database of pre-1865 English-language manuscript cookbooks held in U. S. public institutions as well as a database of kitchen artifacts used at the time these manuscripts were written.”
So far (January 2024), this survey features “1203 manuscripts and 661 kitchen utensils from 138 institutions”. It is wonderful, we think, that the project keeps in mind, and in database records, the interconnection between words and instruments, as well as the importance of words as instruments.
In Hannah’s words:
“Manuscript Cookbooks Survey: Overview and Aims”
To mark the occasion of its 1200th record, Hannah Goeselt will be giving an overview of the Manuscript Cookbooks Survey, as she describes its aim in providing enhanced access to historic English-language manuscript recipe books in collections in the United States. Since its launch in 2013, the survey has represented a major resource for researchers of culinary history. With the accomplishment of its tenth anniversary in 2023, the survey’s creators now reflect on the work of advocating the database to a wider base of librarians, curators, and archivists. This report will be in effort to promote that plan.
Hannah has presented reports of her work for our 2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia, and now joins us for the online series of Episodes.
See also her Guest Blogpost for our blog on Manuscript Studies:
For the purposes of our Episode and its overarching themes, we might observe that, whether the historic manuscript cookbooks embraced by the Survey were composed, compiled, and/or copied by men, women, or anonymous writers, their genre belongs squarely within the domains of writings which traditionally could, and would, offer forms of shelter, expression, outlets, and practical proclamations for women as well as others of similar bent.
Of perennial interest, those potentially useful forms of instruction as recipes could serve as aides memoires for oneself and/or as guides for others. As such, they might come to be passed within and between households, from generation to generation, across communities (stationary, emigrant, or immigrant), and between regions and cultures across time and space.
A Chance for Q&A
The Episode includes the chance for discussion with the presenters and about the subjects.
London, British Library, Harley MS 4431, fol. 3r. At the front of a compilation of her works, Christine de Pisan presents the volume to Isabeau of Bavaria within a luxurious interior. France (Paris), c. 1410 – c. 1414. Image via https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/06/christine-de-pizan-and-the-book-of-the-queen.html
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Registration for the Episode
Episode 15 in the online series of “The Research Group Speaks” is planned for Saturday 20 January 2024, via Zoom, at 1 pm EST (GMT – 5) for about 1 1/2 hours, with discussion and Q&A. You are welcome to join us.
If you wish to attend, please register here:
Registration via the RGME Eventbrite Collection
Registration for this Episode
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Future Episodes
Future Episodes are planned. See:
Our Symposia in February and April will occupy attention, to be followed by our activities in May at the 2024 International Congress of Medieval Studies.
- 2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut (online)
- 2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College (hybrid)
- 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program (in-person, online, and partly hybrid)
Then our series resumes.
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Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga: The mid 15th-century Saint Vincent Panels, attributed to Nuno Gonçalves. Image (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Nuno_Gon%C3%A7alves._Paineis_de_S%C3%A3o_Vicente_de_Fora.jpg) via Creative Commons.
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