Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages

Author / Editor
Heffernan, Thomas J.

Title
Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages

Published
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Physical Description
333 pp.

Description
Using a new critical method, Heffernan examines the characteristics of the saint's life, sacred biography as historical narrative, important works and collections in the tradition, medieval attitudes toward virginity and chastity,rhetoric and the oral tradition, and the frequency of sexual assault on female saints, as found in the tradition.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.