Scholar Reveals Anonymous Texts Were Likely Written by Women

Alison Flood of The Guardian informs readers about Diane Watt's forthcoming book Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100, which "argues that women were at the heart of the emerging English literary tradition much earlier." 

Watt, a professor at the University of Surrey, lays out in the book how some anonymous texts from the period were probably created by women, and contends that men rewrote works originally produced by women.

“There was a vibrant literary culture that women were involved in, in a whole range of ways, before the Norman conquest. There’s a big Latin tradition preceding that which isn’t considered, partly because it’s in Latin and partly because the picture hasn’t been put together,” said Watt. “People might notice isolated cases of women’s writing, but the evidence hasn’t been put together.”

Her book brings a host of early female writers together, including Leoba, an English missionary and abbess of Tauberbischofsheim in Franconia who died in 782; and Hugeburc, an English nun who joined the Benedictine monastery of Heidenheim. Leoba’s one surviving letter features the earliest example of poetry by an Englishwoman (“Farewell, and may you live long and happily, making intercession for me,” runs Watt’s translation from the Latin), while Hugeburc wrote an account of the lives of the brothers St Willibald and St Winnebald. Hugeburc is seen as the first named English woman writer of a full-length narrative, with her authorship of the text only discovered in the 20th century, when her name was found to be encrypted in the manuscript. Unencrypted, the Latin reads: “Ego una Saxonica nomine Hugeburc ordinando hec scribebam,” or “I, a Saxon nun named Hugeburc, wrote this”.

“There isn’t a modern translation so it’s not something people could go and read, but a text like that is so important,” said Watt. “And for Leoba, who was a close supporter of St Boniface, her very first letter to him includes lines of verse, which she’s composing in order to impress him. It seems to work because he subsequently invites her to travel to Germany to join the mission. She’s using poetry almost [as a] CV. So we know women were writing poetry back then.”

Learn more at The Guardian.