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Sheila Delany's spirited translation of Osbern Bokenham's Legendys of Hooly Wummen (14431447) makes available in modern English the first all-female hagiography. Closely translated from elaborate, Latinate Middle English verse into fluent prose, A Legend of Holy Women contains the Augustinian friars version of the stories of 13 women saints from gospel, apocrypha, martyrology, and high-medieval history. As Delany writes in her comprehensive introduction, Bokenham gives us not only an all-female hagiographyan authorial decision significant in its own rightbut a gallery of powerful, articulate women who are indubitably worthy to do Gods work. Some of them are well-educated, some give sound political advice to a monarch, some preach, converting hundreds and thousands to Christianity, some walk on water or perform resurrection. Nor are they pacifists; on the contrary, they call for divinely inflicted vengeance and approve violence in their cause. Delany argues that Geoffrey Chaucers Legend of Good Women provided a principle of selection and of arrangement for Bokenhams array of saints. She suggests further that the friars choice of all-female hagiography, and his poetic representation

Author

Osbern Bokenham; Legends of holy women

Publisher

Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press

Published

1992

Language

EN

ISBN

9780268012953

Subjects

Literary Fiction, History, Sociology