Her Life Historical: Exemplarity and Female Saints' Lives in Late Medieval England

Author / Editor
Sanok, Catherine.

Title
Her Life Historical: Exemplarity and Female Saints' Lives in Late Medieval England

Published
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

Physical Description
xvii, 256 pp.

Description
Discusses the creation of female audiences, examining LGW and other works (including WBT) to explore how saints' lives shaped literary history, thus making women "visible participants" in vernacular literary culture. Alceste is a metonym for a broader audience and a "distinctively 'feminine' response." SNT offers new perspectives on the limits and meaning of hagiographic exemplarity through the public performance of an imitation of a virgin martyr.

Chaucer Subjects
Legend of Good Women
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
Second Nun and Her Tale.