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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 1047: Boundless Devotion: Female Spirituality across Borders

Wednesday 8 July 2020, 09.00-10.30

Organisers:Clarck Drieshen, British Library, London
Godelinde Gertrude Perk, Avdelningen för Humaniora, Mittuniversitets, Sundsvall
Moderator/Chair:Laura Saetveit Miles, Institutt for Fremmedspråk, Universitet i Bergen
Paper 1047-aTranslating Domesticity in Mechtild of Hackeborn's Middle English Booke of Gostlye Grace
(Language: English)
Louise Campion, Department of English & Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick
Index terms: Language and Literature - Comparative, Language and Literature - Middle English, Language and Literature - Latin, Women's Studies
Paper 1047-bImagine All the Christs: Translatio and Performatio of Spiritual Role-Play in the Middle Dutch Treatise Dat boec der minnen
(Language: English)
Lieke Andrea Smits, Centre for the Arts in Society, Universiteit Leiden
Index terms: Language and Literature - Dutch, Women's Studies
Paper 1047-cSisters without Borders: Liturgy and Translatio in Sister-Books from the Low Countries and German Territories
(Language: English)
Godelinde Gertrude Perk, Avdelningen för Humaniora, Mittuniversitets, Sundsvall
Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Comparative, Language and Literature - Dutch, Language and Literature - German
Paper 1047-dLeben Jesu and Its Female Audiences: Translating the Vita Christi for German Observant Convents
(Language: English)
Orsolya Mednyánszky, Independent Scholar, Massachusetts
Index terms: Art History - General, Language and Literature - German, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Monasticism
Abstract

Although medieval women participated in a pan-European religious culture, modern linguistic and national borders have long constrained the comparative study of medieval women's spirituality. Focusing on northwestern Europe between the 11th-13th centuries, the papers will investigate how vernacular devotional-mystical writings for and/or by women (from visionary works and lives of Christ to vitae and devotional treatises) translate and adapt concepts, practices, and texts from internationally available Latin works. They will highlight interactions between female audiences of different vocations and separated in time and space, similarities and differences in how women deployed translation to negotiate cultural power relations, and contemporary understandings of selfhood, identity, and gender.