Medieval Area Seminar Presentation with Anne Elise Crafton
You Sound Like a Wif: The Representation of Women's Speech in Old English Literature."
Please RSVP for the catered lunch.
This event is hosted by The English Department's Medieval Area Seminar, which works to advance scholarship in medieval literature with faculty and graduate students at Notre Dame.
The presenter is Anne Elise Crafton, a fourth year Ph.D. student in the Medieval Institute.
The dissertation from which this presentation is drawn examines every instance of women's direct speech in the extant vernacular corpus to answer three questions: First, does the virulent antifeminist rhetoric on the evils of women's speech of post-Conquest England exist before the arrival of the Normans? Second, is there evidence that the early English saw the gender of the speaker and their manner of speaking as connected? Third, does this impact the literary representation of women's speech in any consistent way? Using a combination of methods adapted from literary and Critical Discourse Analysis, the dissertation studies an exhaustive list of sources, including prose and poetic hagiography, prose and poetic secular literature, homilies, and martyrologies. In her presentation, Anne will be discussing the contexts and methodologies of the dissertation, and then will conclude with a few of the most interesting discoveries thus far.
If you know someone who would be interested in joining us, feel free to extend an invitation.
Originally published at english.nd.edu. Please check their website for the most up-to-date details.