The Woman in the Mirror

Women's role in the middle ages as mediators between the literate culture of the monastery and the largely illiterate culture of the secular courts, widely acknowledged, remains little understood. Powell shows that 12th century monastic culture articulated an idea of woman's reception of the Word that vernacular court poets were able to shape into a poetics of text in performance. The performance becomes a vehicle of the aurally and visually manifest truth, and vernacular poetry is an alternative Scripture for laymen who "read" as women. This study contributes to our understanding of the beginnings of European literary tradition.