Sex and gender in medieval and Renaissance texts : the Latin tradition /

These 11 studies plus an all-embracing and useful introduction bring a neglected area to light, namely, women writers of Latin (and Greek!), ranging from Heloise to Fulvia Olympia Morata (1526-55). Nancy Jones opens the volume with a fruitful retrospective analysis of female lament in Augustine's Confessions and in the correspondence of Abelard and Heloise. Subsequent chapters deal with Hrotswitha of Gandersheim; medieval Italian mystics (e.g., Margherita of Faenza); a 14th-century troubadour poet; Petrarch's Sophonisba; C. Agrippa's De nobilitate; George Buchanan's Apologia pro Lena; Alabaster's Elizabethan Roxana; and five Renaissance Italian women humanists. A substantial and important collection that deserves to be widely available for feminist scholars and others interested in this Latinate stream. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. Cormier; Longwood College