Despite attempts to suppress early women's speech, this study demonstrates that women were still actively engaged in cultural practices and speech strategies that were both complicit with the patriarchal ideology whilst also undermining it.

"Against a background of traditional patriarchal anxieties and constraints in regard to women's speech, Bodden's important new study explores the transgressive nature of women's voices, the cultural authorization of bold speech, and agency that women were able to exercise especially within the law courts and in mysticism. This insightful study will be of particular interest to scholars in Medieval and Early European Studies and Women's Studies." - Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Professor of History in the Department of Liberal Studies, DCS, and Medieval and Women's Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Bodden offers the reader abeautifully conceptualized analysis of the engendering politics of language in medieval and early modern England. In so doing,herbook joins the ranks of such classics as Michel de Certeau on mystic speech and Helen Solterer on disputing women.In engaging with the serpent, she emerges as a serpent whisperer." - Kathleen Biddick,Professor of History, Temple University

Autorentext
M.C. BODDEN is Associate Professor of English at Marquette University, USA.

Inhalt
Idle Talk and the Criminalization of Women's Speech The Imagined Woman Women, Conversation, Crime, and the Courts Staged Conversations Code-Switching: Male Crossing into Female Speech Domain Margery Kempe: 'I grab the microphone and move my body'