Manuscript 5116 of the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris opens with the words ‘C’est le beau romant des deux amants Palamon et Arcita et de la belle et saige Emilia translaté de vieil langaige et prose en nouveau et rime par mademoiselle Anne de Graville la Mallet, dame du Bois Malesherbes. Du commandement de la Royne (The fine story of the two lovers Palamon and Arcita and the beautiful and wise Emilia, translated from the old prose version into a new, rhymed one, by Lady Anne de Graville la Mallet, Dame du Bois Malesherbes, at the request of the queen) (fig. 1). This long title announces the genesis and authorship of the Beau roman– a reworking of the Livre de Thezeo, itself based on Boccaccio's Teseida– by the noblewoman Anne de Graville (c. 1490–1540) and its dedication to the queen, Claude of France (1499–1524), wife of Francis I (1494–1547). It is followed by a dedicatory prologue in which Anne de Graville addresses her ‘souveraine dame’ and the text continues on the verso, beneath a large miniature showing Claude seated on a throne draped in royal blue, under a canopy decorated with her arms of France and Brittany (fig. 2). Accompanied by a group of conversing ladies on her left, Claude turns towards Anne, who, soberly dressed in black, kneels on her right and humbly presents the queen with her work which she composed between 1521 and 1524. Whereas images of men presenting their works to women patrons are not unusual at the turn of the sixteenth century – for example, Jean Marot presenting his Voyage de Gênesto Claude's mother, Anne of Brittany (1477–1514) (fig. 3) – such images of woman-to-woman presentation are more unusual. Text and image on both sides of the Beau roman's opening folio nevertheless bear witness to women's literary activity at the French court as readers, patrons andwriters. The Arsenal miniature does, of course, have a precedent in a more famous example from one hundred years earlier, that of Christine de Pizan offering her collected works to another queen of France, Isabel of Bavaria (c. 1370–1435), surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting in the Queen's Manuscript(fig. 4).

Around the time of their marriage in 1507, Pierre de Balsac offered his wife, Anne de Graville, a luxurious manuscript illuminated by the Master of the Chronique scandaleuse. The frontispiece depicts a centrally seated Anne reaching up to take a book, offered to her by a disembodied hand guided by Cupid (fig. 7). A group of men and women gather behind her chair and a banderol with an anagram of Anne's name, j’en garde un leal, floats above her head. Below, in the bas-de-page, is the Graville coat of arms, de gueules, à trois fermaux d’or(red with three gold buckles), and on the opposite folio, a dedicatory prologue praises Anne and introduces the work that follows as that of Berosus the Chaldean. In contrast to the miniature in the Beau romanin which Anne is depicted as an authorpresenting her work to Queen Claude (fig. 2), the opening miniature of the Chaldean Historiesclearly positions Anne as a discerning recipient– and by implication, reader– of high-quality, and original, books. This manuscript, its illustration and its text – actually a translation of Annius da Viterbo's 1498 Antiquities– is the principal subject of the next chapter, but its opening miniature is a fitting place to begin this discursive reconstruction and analysis of Anne's collection. The Chaldean Historiesand other volumes owned by Anne bear witness to her participation in a long-standing tradition of book culture in and around the French court, one in which women were serious players. This chapter shows how Anne carefully crafted her collection in relation to her personal interests – familial as well as literary – and points to the fundamental role her books and reading played in establishing her as a writer in the patronage of royal women.

Between Graville and d’Urfé: Problems, Sources, and Evidence for Defining Anne's Library

Despite never having been the subject of a full-length modern study, Anne de Graville has frequently been evoked in studies into late medieval women's book ownership for the size and importance of her collection. These evocations have, however, relied largely on Montmorand's 1917 biography of Anne in which he stated that Anne probably inherited most of the manuscripts that her father had collected, as well as on studies of the d’Urfé library.

Chantilly, Bibliotheque du chateau, ms 513, Beau roman, monotextual, c. 1520–24

• • Vellum, 240 mm x 165 mm

• • Prologue entitled ‘A la royne’ with anagram J’en garde un lealin the bas-de-page(fol. 1v)

• • Cordeliere border, arms of Claude of France within a large letter G made of Breton ermine (fol. 2r)

Paris, Arsenal, ms 5116, Beau roman(ff. 2–69), c. 1520–24

• • Vellum, 240 x 160 mm

• • Frontispiece miniature (fol. 1v) showing Anne presenting the book to Queen Claude of France; Claude's arms on the canopy

• • Contains the long title ‘C’est le beau romant des deux amants Palamon et Arcita et de la belle et saige Emilia translate de vieil langaige et prose en nouveau et rime par mademoiselle Anne de Graville la Mallet, dame du Bois Malesherbes. Du commandement de la Royne’ (fol. 1r)

• • Miniatures

• • Missing ten lines of text also absent from nafr. 719

• • Also includes Mace de Villebresme's Epistre de Clériande(before 1518; ff. 71–76v) and Clement Marot's Epistre de Maguelonne(before 1519; ff. 77–83)

Paris, BnF, ms fr. 1397, Beau roman, monotextual, c. 1520–24

• • Vellum, 170 x 250 mm

• • Prologue but no dedication to the queen (fol. 1r)

Paris, BnF, ms fr. 2253, Rondeaux, monotextual, after 1524?

• • Vellum, 210 x c. 140 mm

• • Prologue with dedication ‘A ma dame’ and Anne's anagram (fol. 2v)

Paris, BnF, ms fr. 25441, monotextual, c. 1520–24

• • Vellum, 215 × 145 mm

• • Prologue with dedication ‘A la Royne’ (fol. 5v) and Anne's anagram (fol. 6v)

• • Lacunae indicating it once had miniatures

• • Folios 3r–v and 4r contain loose handwriting recording the marriage in 1532 and the subsequent births of the children of Jeanne de Balsac and Claude d’Urfe

Paris, BnF, ms nafr. 719, Beau roman, monotextual, c. 1520–24

• • Paper, 262 × 198 mm

• • Previously Stockholm, n° LIV; entered the BnF in 1872 in exchange for ms scandinave 8. When in Stockholm, the manuscript was bound with three printed texts: Guillaume Le Rouille's Alenconiensis causidici in legibus licentiati: Justicie atque injusticie descriptionum compendium(Paris: C. Chevallon, 1520) now Stockholm National Library, Jurid. Allm; and excerpts from a Livre de Jhesusand La Doctrine des Crestiens(c. 1525?) now Stockholm National Library, 173 H Br. qv. Livre

In 2018, the town library in Le Havre announced that it would be undergoing refurbishment, reopening in September 2020 with a new name, the ‘Bibliotheque Anne de Graville’. This decision puts Anne's name very much on the map in one of the Norman towns with which she and her family were closely connected. The choice of name, rather than that of her more famous bibliophile father, Louis, is evidence of an increased willingness to shine a public light on the roles played by women in history. Anne certainly merits this public accolade: her inclusion in Tory's Champfleuryand the riddle on her name in fr. 24315 show that she had earned a reputation for her learning and literary skills during her lifetime. Yet, by the early twentieth century she was criticised for her lack of style and originality and the ‘crime’ of having transformed Boccaccio's Teseida into a sentimental tale for women. Such, perhaps, are the turnings of Fortune's wheel, the cruelties of which Anne was only too aware and from which she, like Christine de Pizan, sought solace in books and writing. However, Anne's place in the wilderness cannot simply be attributed to this fickle mistress. Although the last forty or fifty years have seen scholars of art, book and literary history engage in the serious study of women as patrons and writers, Anne de Graville has continued to occupy a place on the sidelines, and the reasons for this remain largely rooted in historiography and in scholarly practices: the erasure of her first known patron, Claude of France, from the history books; the lack of scholarly editions of Anne's works (and an academic system that tends not to reward such outputs adequately); an ongoing bias towards better-known and -documented male patrons; and the restrictive nature of historical periodisation, which tends to divide the medieval from the early modern in ways that do not always fit with Anne's interests and activity.

In 1392, the Korean peninsula experienced an epochal event, the revolution that abruptly ended the Goryeo Dynasty (918–1392) and ushered in the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897) in its stead, a dynasty that would endure to the dawn of pre-modern Korea. One feature of the fledgling dynasty was the rise of the Neo-Confucian literati who were aristocratic scholar-officials. Only these members of the elite ruling Yangban class had the opportunity to take on this role, subject to passing the examination that all prospective bureaucrats were obliged to sit. These men – for they were all men – dominated politics, serving in the royal court in Hanyang (modern-day Seoul) and sharing their expertise in classical Chinese literature, the possession of which was a prerequisite for a member of the Yangban to complete his education. Placing particular value on the arts, one of their preferred pastimes was entertaining themselves with sijo (lyrical three-line verse written in the vernacular) to express their Neo-Confucian philosophy and emotions.

Besides the Yangban, no other class of people was capable of contributing to this canon, with one notable exception: the Kisaeng. Kisaeng were women who provided companionship and entertainment (music and poetry) to Yangban. In this essay, we argue that the work of the Kisaeng poets has not been fully recognised; certain merits of their verse have gone unexamined in a way that would enable the reader to fully appreciate their contribution to literature. The problem stems from the tendency of modern scholars to frame their studies of Kisaeng sijo as they would the works of male-authored sijo. We contest this approach because it ignores the fact that in their sijo Kisaeng poets introduce criticism of their male admirers, presenting them as inferior and unworthy of respect to the extent that they display a lack of fidelity. This contrasts starkly with male-authored sijo in which the poet and the male admirer were identical and, while the male poet did not invariably refrain from adopting a critical voice towards the object of the male admirer's affection, he never did so when there was any danger of these words being misconstrued as referring to the king himself.

In juxtaposing female- and male-authored sijo and the contrasting political implications of their words it is important to bear in mind that causing offence to the reigning monarch could result in a person being exiled.

Rābi‘a al-‘Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya, also known as Rābi‘a al-Basriyya (d. 801), is the most renowned Muslim female ascetic in the Islamic world. Recognised simply as Rābi‘a, she continues to be venerated as a saint and celebrated as the earliest Sufi poet to express her love for the divine; indeed, it is not difficult to find streams of poems, anecdotes and devotional sayings attributed to her. The roughly defined corpus of poetry that carries Rābi‘a's name is a treasure trove of literary abundance. Collectively, these works reveal a strident, independent woman deeply devoted to God who is at once affectionate, witty, sharp and, as Ayoush Lazikani demonstrates here and elsewhere, rich in feeling, whose poetry is invaluable for exploring Muslim women's expressions of affective piety and divine love. However, in this essay I aim to approach Rābi‘a not as a poet, but as a constructed literary figure created through male authorship. As Rkia Elaroui Cornell has recently shown, the rich and multivocal Rābi‘a who exists in literary form is at odds with the historic Rābi‘a: few facts about her exist and there is no textual evidence to suggest she composed poetry or recorded biographical anecdotes during her own lifetime. Instead, her narrative and literary voice has been constructed, shaped and interpreted by a range of male authors who are responsible not only for the anachronistic labels of Rābi‘a as both Sufi and a Divine Love poet, but for singling her out as an exemplary female mystic who holds as much, if not more, authority than her male counterparts.

The role of male authorship has long been recognised as crucial to the preservation of early Muslim women's voices and one of a number of obstacles in determining ‘something of the true historical lives and spiritual practices of early saints and mystical figures’. In order to reap the value of these writings, scholars have turned to them in earnest – and rightly so. As Maria Dakake emphatically notes,

Here, I want to emphasise that fictionality, invariably male-authored, is a key component in Muslim women's writing.

This chapter investigates the dynamics of institutional reform in northern Italy at the beginning of the thirteenth century. It focuses on how religious women influenced and shaped the processes of institutionalisation that affected their way of life. By examining two exemplary case studies from the northern region of Lombardy, I will explore how these mulieres religiose were gradually consolidated into monastic institutions through a long-term and negotiated process. Close attention to how these processes unfolded highlights how religious communities were shaped by their local social, religious and political circumstances. The roles of papal, episcopal and monastic authorities, local benefactors and stakeholders in the affected communities and, above all, the women themselves, are key to understanding the contingent processes through which mulieres religiose became Cistercian nuns.

The case studies in this chapter are from the northern Italian cities of Cremona and Pavia. The individual communities shared similar features, such as their location in an urban environment, strong local support and relation to episcopal authority, although the processes of institutionalisation unfolded along very different trajectories contingent upon specific local circumstances. This analysis allows us to examine the motives of various actors involved; it also gives an insight into how very different processes of institutional change nevertheless produced similar results in transforming the organisational structures of women's religious communities.

Religious Women and the Cistercian Order in Lombardy

Women's religious communities could be associated with the Cistercian Order in varying ways. Some female monasteries were officially incorporated into the Order by the General Chapter, although this juridical status did not necessarily guarantee the provision of spiritual care by the Cistercians. In contrast, many female communities were granted Cistercian privileges and the right to follow the Cistercian Institutiones by the pope, and were recognised as Cistercian by the Curia without any involvement by the General Chapter. Further, various monastic patrons, such as episcopal or secular founders, also favoured the Cistercian way of life and initiated processes to gain recognition and incorporation of their foundations with the General Chapter, as much as they could. The women concerned also endeavoured to live a religious life influenced by Cistercian ideals, adopting Cistercian customs and acquiring the benefits of their associated legal privileges, although they remained outside the formal structures of the General Chapter.

The links between female communities and the Cistercian Order were diverse, and the exact nature of this institutional relationship has been widely debated.

The study of paratexts in medieval and early-modern books in manuscript and print is far from a recent phenomenon in scholarship. But it is fair to say that the materiality of the book as an object of study is currently surfing a rising swell of popularity amongst both literary scholars and historians, who see it as a tangible means by which to trace and track matters of reception and readerly taste, thus allowing them to take their study beyond the mere evaluation of the content and form of the text itself. Gérard Genette famously coined the term ‘paratext’ to describe extra-textual matter that forms a type of threshold (seuil, in the original French) through which readers can step in order to experience a deeper understanding of the text proper. Scholars, he argues, can follow in their footsteps and cross these thresholds so as to gain a greater understanding of the nature of these previous readers’ engagement with the text. There is not sufficient space here to do justice to the many different facets of paratextual and materiality studies of the sort that have arisen in the wake of Genette's seminal work, which pertains as much to modern textual studies as it does to pre-modern, but some of the key areas of fascination can be summarised as follows: marginalia added by readers as keys to nuancing our understanding of reception (as well as more mundane matters such as ownership); prefaces and prologues as indexes of rewriting and motivation for publication; illustration and word/image connections as clues to the target reader's understanding and comprehension of the text, as well as to that reader's likely cultural knowledge; developing practices of book layout and finding-aid provision as insights into both historical reading practice and reading skills development, as well as changing use of, and even taste for, particular texts. The list could, of course, go on, but it is in this last area, layout and finding-aid provision, that this article finds its locus.

The study of the history of the book in this context might most profitably be seen as tracing and understanding the development of a particular technology, the book itself being that technology. Like all technology, it undergoes regular updates so as to remain operational to users as their own needs change and develop.

In a fundamental essay published in 1991 on the significance of religious women’s communities in early and high medieval Saxony, the late Michel Parisse called for a comparative perspective on the political, social and religious conditions of the conspicuous density of women's communities in Saxony. In doing so, he referred to his home region of Lorraine, for which he – amongst others – used the term Lotharingia to describe its early medieval reality. In terms of sheer numbers, Lotharingia is indeed closest to the Saxon situation, but chronologically its monasteries also refer back to earlier times. Examples of this are the Merovingian foundations of Remiremont in the Vosges and Sainte-Glossinde and Saint-Pierreaux- Nonnains in the Carolingian lieu de mémoire Metz. Women's monasteries like these combined stabilising power in the Carolingian core lands with supra-regional influence within the framework of the Frankish regnum and imperium. For areas such as Saxony, which were integrated comparatively late into the Frankish sphere of influence, the politico-religious structures of the ancient parts of the Frankish realm provided a framework of tradition and reference far into the post-Carolingian period.

In this contribution – not least as an expression of gratitude to one of my academic teachers – I would like to take up Parisse's observations. I do not aim at a similarly broad investigation, especially since a comparative approach in a broad thematic perspective would go beyond the scope of the contribution as well as of this volume, even though recent studies on women's religious communities in Saxony and Lorraine invite us to do so. The focus is rather on a partial aspect: the textual and ideological relations between liturgy and hagiography in the tenth and early eleventh centuries. Such an approach is complementary to studies in which the importance of relics and hagiographical texts as vectors of communication, the transfer of ideas and the spatial integration of new secular and ecclesiastical structures of power were elaborated – again primarily for the Carolingian period. Following on from these studies, the observations in this article concentrate on religious and monastic aspects of these genres and raise questions about the shared significance of liturgy and hagiography for the definition and mediation of traditional as well as new ascetic and monastic models of life in the tenth century.

The debates which shaped these models are part of monastic and broader religious transformations traditionally labelled as the reform of the tenth and early eleventh century.

The myth, and the minstrel life

Who were the minstrels of medieval England? What did they do to earn a living, and what sort of lives did they lead? What music did they play, and what other sorts of entertainment could they offer? Medieval iconography shows that many instrumentalists lived comfortably as liveried servants of royalty and the aristocracy; records of court proceedings show that some of the lower-class independent minstrels had brushes with the law (and this is in fact the only type of evidence we have for most of them). Clearly, these are the two extremes of a wide range of social situations in which minstrels lived, and the picture in reality must be a much more complex one.

When it comes to vocal minstrelsy it is mainly literary evidence that provides information. But here a ready-made picture comes to mind: for everyone ‘knows’ that in medieval England minstrels wandered the countryside, singing love-songs and ballads to the accompaniment of a lute and earning a few pence, a meal or a night's lodging in any place where they were welcomed. While most such men were virtually stateless and included rogues and thieves among their ranks, some – like Robin Hood's Allan-a-Dale – were more respected and worked locally.

This popular myth, apparently confirmed by W.S. Gilbert (in The Mikado, 1885) and Hollywood, offers one version of the minstrel. Another was offered by eighteenth- century antiquaries, who saw the minstrel not as a ragamuffin but as a bard, a figure of great power. The age yearned for a primitive oral past, and found it when in 1760 James Macpherson published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry, the works he attributed to the legendary poet Ossian (Plate 1). These fragments, the ‘words of the bards in the days of song: when the king heard the music of the harps, the tales of other times’, were a literary sensation. There was soon a ferocious debate over just how extensively Macpherson had reworked the materials he had collected from Gaelic oral tradition. Some, like Samuel Johnson, derided the Ossianic corpus as pure forgery. Nevertheless, Ossian was widely celebrated and many regarded the medieval minstrels as the inheritors of this bardic tradition.