Book contents
- Women’s Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
- Women’s Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Book as Bloodline
- Chapter 2 Records on the Landscape
- Chapter 3 Tracing Mobility
- Chapter 4 Mothers and Messengers
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
Chapter 1 - The Book as Bloodline
The Life of Queen Margaret of Scotland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2024
- Women’s Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
- Women’s Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Book as Bloodline
- Chapter 2 Records on the Landscape
- Chapter 3 Tracing Mobility
- Chapter 4 Mothers and Messengers
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
Summary
Books, both real ones and those described in texts, are effective vehicles for women’s genealogies in medieval narratives because of their tactile form and ability to be transmitted. Medieval writers understood books not merely as containing genealogies but also as key participants in genealogical construction and propagation. This chapter explores books in the early twelfth-century Vita sanctae Margaretae reginae Scotorum, commissioned by the new English queen, Edith/Matilda, about her mother, Margaret of Scotland. The Vita asserts a maternal inheritance for Edith/Matilda premised in part on the literary patronage, physical interactions with books, and pious reading of mother and daughter, creating a nonhuman genealogy parallel to their biological one that negotiates a complex Anglo-Scottish-Norman history. This chapter examines the Vita in relation to depictions of book patronage by Emma of Normandy, Adela of Blois, and Constance FitzGilbert; submerged book miracles in the lives of Cuthbert, Columba, and Modwenna; and Margaret’s extant gospel book.
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- Women's Genealogies in the Medieval Literary ImaginationMatrilineal Legacies in the High Middle Ages, pp. 23 - 54Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024