Chapter 3 Where Textual Bodies Meet: Anglo-Saxon Women’s Epistolary Friendships

Feminist Approaches to Early Medieval English Studies Feminist Approaches to Early Medieval English Studies , edited by Robin Norris, Rebecca Stephenson, and Renée Trilling, Knowledge Communities 12, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2023, pp. 408, €145.00 (hardback), ISBN: 9789463721462

“…As we have seen, embroidered textiles are quite rare in the period before Christianization (with a caveat that this may be based on the conditions of survival), this changes post-Conversion. Early embroideries, as far as we can tell from the few extant examples, may have been imported, but the need to furnish Christian ceremonies and buildings leads to creations made from 48 We may consider a letter from Boniface to Bugga in which he recommends that she should defer her pilgrimage because of the considerable dangers ahead; he also thanks Bugga for the gifts and vestments she had sent with her query; Rau,Briefe,[94][95][96] This is not just restricted to early medieval England. Inscriptions on textiles are mentioned in medieval continental courtly narratives; see Ludger Lieb, "Woven Words, Embroidered Stories: Inscriptions on Textiles, " in Beyond Pen and Parchment: Inscribed Objects in Medieval European Literature, ed.…”

“…They may not have been made together and they may have been designed at different points. 94 The designer of the Tapestry was clearly Latinate and was intimately familiar with the events leading up to the Norman Conquest. The examples cited here allow us to see glimpses of possible female literacy, and not just of religious women, but also of aristocratic lay women who often commissioned and potentially also made these items.…”

Jewish heterosexuality, queer celibacy? Ælfric translates the Old Testament priesthood

“…These 'alternative' familial structures, in theory, severed and replaced both the generative ('procreative sexuality') and affiliative ('related families') connections of hetero-patriarchal family life. In practice, familial bonds both competed with and complemented monastic kinship ties; Lisa M. C. Weston's study of amicitia in Anglo-Saxon nuns' letters, for instance, demonstrates that Leoba calls upon both spiritual and secular kinship ties to address Boniface, and that Eangyth, mother of many spiritual daughters, shares a privileged bond with Heaburg, who is also her biological child (Weston, 2011).…”

A Fragmentary Archive: Migratory Feelings in Early Anglo-Saxon Women’s Letters

“…As Howe notes, "against great obstacles of distance and culture, the ecclesia as community could be preserved through letters" (Howe, 1989, p. 141). The importance of friendship, and the extent to which it is celebrated, within these letters, should not be understated (Wallace, 1995;Weston, 2008Weston, , 2010, but accounts of the pain of those who find themselves without friends or kin and the suffering of those left behind are equally significant. A considerable number of the letters of both groups of women address the feelings of the writers, who, because of pilgrimage or missionary migration, find themselves separated from their mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, and other more distant kin and from their close spiritual friends.…”

“…Much of the Boniface correspondence was probably gathered together in the first instance by Boniface's disciple and successor, Lul, possibly, in part, as a guide to letter writing (Orchard, 2001). Nevertheless, as Andy Orchard (2001) and Lisa M. C. Weston (2010) have both shown, despite its diffuse nature, the correspondence is characterized by intense intertextuality and a common literary or epistolary language and also by a common set of emotional values centered on experiences of solitude and isolation.…”