This chapter explores Maconchy’s eclectic text selection for her solo vocal works and the individual style in which she brought those texts to life. Her compositional life is described in three distinct stages, detailing her approach to text selection and setting as it developed throughout her career. It begins in her student years, when Maconchy was studying under Vaughan Williams and drew her inspiration from poets like Shakespeare, Keats, and Rossetti. We then see how her songs evolved from simple text settings to more complex, dramatic works, in which Maconchy evidences a unique ability to enhance the meaning of poetry through music. Finally, her later compositions showcase her mastery of harmonic complexity and emotional depth, influenced by her Irish heritage, political engagement, and her optimism. This chapter celebrates Maconchy’s innovative approach to text setting and vocal writing has made her a significant yet underappreciated figure in the English song repertoire.

Chapter 8 employs Welby’s Meaning Triad to examine the boundary separating girlhood and womanhood under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and its repercussions on the protection of the girl child. It examines the definition of ‘woman’ in international law and the English language, and the life-cycle approach. It notes that the CEDAW fails to provide a parameter for the beginning of womanhood, thus it is not clear whether girls of all ages – young girls and adolescent girls – are covered by this treaty. It observes that female human beings located at the intersection of girlhood and womanhood may fall short of the protection of both the CRC and many provisions of the CEDAW. It applies semioethics theory and considers revising the CEDAW to undoubtedly ensure that girls are covered under this treaty, save for provisions allocating ‘adult rights’.

Hugeburc, an Anglo-Saxon nun who moved to Germany and became abbess of Heidenheim, undertook a biography of Willibald, who with his brother Wynnebald had travelled from England with his father on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Willibald eventually became bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria. The heart of Hugeburc’s biography is concerned with Willibald’s experiences in the Holy Land, where he visited many sites mentioned in the Bible: he told Hugeburc of his adventures and she recorded them in a kind of diary form, which contrasts with the more elaborate style of the Latin she uses in the non-dictated sections.

From Geoffrey of Monmouth’s hugely popular History of the kings of Britain, which influenced a great deal of medieval literature in various languages, are taken two excerpts. The first records a meeting, supposedly in the fifth century, between the Celtic leader Vortigern and the Saxon leader Hengist with his daughter Renwein (Rowen) who offers Vortigern a drink using the English greeting Wassail. The second is an account of king Arthur’s battle against the Saxons at Badon Hill.

This section contains excerpts from two sermons, one from the thirteenth century by Thomas of Chobham who wrote a number of sermons, a work on preaching and a work on virtues and vices, and one anonymous sermon in macaronic form, from the fifteenth century, in which Latin and English are blended to create a syntactically homogeneous whole. The purpose of such macaronic sermons is unclear. The third item in this section is a short ghost-story, which appears in a commonplace book, and was possibly used in a sermon to make a point about the importance of the Mass for remission from time in Purgatory.

Burginda was a woman about whom little is known, apparently writing around 710. She writes a letter to an unknown young man, urging him in rhetorical and learned prose, to lead a spiritual life. The letter includes a few lines where Burginda reworks part of a Christian poem from north Africa from about AD 500. The letter survives in a single manuscript.

Goscelin was born in Flanders but spent most of his life in monasteries in England. He was a great writer of biographies of saints, particularly of early Saxon women. His Book of Consolation is a wonderfully imaginative work addressed to a woman whom he loved after meeting her at Wilton Abbey before she was sent to a monastery in Gaul. Goscelin speaks much of spiritual friendship and the spiritual life, quotes from Christian and classical text and includes fascinating details about medieval life.

In an opinion that made national news, the high court in Maryland reversed the judgment of an intermediate court and upheld the defendant’s conviction for rape. The court explicitly rejected the defendant and intermediate court’s reasoning that consent should be evaluated using a reasonable victim standard. Although the opinion in Rusk is widely cited as a turning point in recognizing sexual violence in nonstranger rape cases, there remained many elements of the opinion that have been the object of feminist criticism.

In their public and private writings, lesbian poets Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper) and Amy Levy reflected the greater freedoms, including university education and physical mobility, of the New Woman. They travelled in Germany and Switzerland for professional development, aesthetic stimulation, and leisure. Europe as an aesthetic theatre underwrote new poems and provided imaginative stimuli for Michael Field, but they also moved from Anglocentric to Anglo-German perspectives and ethnoexocentrism during extended stays in Germany, when they also enhanced their German skills. The private writings of Amy Levy and Michael Field both mention the sexual danger that could accompany foreign travel. Katharine Bradley’s The New Minnesinger (1875) also shared interests in translation with Levy. Levy began translating German poets while attending Newnham College, Cambridge; Germany and German language became most closely associated for her with Heine and the Jewish identity she shared with him. Her travels additionally inspired minor short fiction susceptible to normative or queer readings. Queer sexuality also informs poems she inscribed to Vernon Lee, whom she loved; this cluster also reflects Levy’s in-depth cultural exchange with the poetry of Heine.

The story of one African American woman's journey with substance use disorder and recovery. She examines the stigma that is associated with substance use disorder and how various interactions led to self-stigmatizing views.