Images of enclosed gardens are everywhere apparent in medieval literature – from biblical narrative to secular love lyric, to adventurous romance tale. This Gardens Trust February 14 online lecture, however, will engage with its representation in literary works written by, for or about women in order to demonstrate the powerful, gendered dynamics inherent to this multivalent space, a gendered representation that often afforded women more agency than traditional representation normally permitted.
Lecturer Liz Herbert McAvoy is Professor Emerita in Medieval Literature at Swansea University and Honorary Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol. Her primary research interests lie in the areas of texts written by, for and about medieval women; female anchoritism and other forms of enclosure; the medieval garden; and female mysticism. She has written widely on all these topics, including three recent books published by Boydell & Brewer: Women’s Literary Cultures in the Global Middle Ages (2023), edited with Sue Niebrzydowski, Vicki Kay Price and Kathryn Loveridge; and Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages (2023), edited with Cate Gunn and Naoe Kukita Yoshikawa. This talk is based on the findings in her latest monograph, The Enclosed Garden and the Medieval Religious Imaginary (2021).
Ticket price 8 pounds, through Eventbrite. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session, available for a week, will be sent shortly afterwards. Register at www.eventbrite.co.uk
