Chapter 11 - Lyrics

Summary

This essay explores the ways in which the genre of medieval lyric illuminates womenߣs literary culture. Lyrics offer insights into attitudes to women and creative engagements with gender; sacred lyrics find special inspiration in the figure of the Virgin Mary. As Fuller shows, straightforward readings are likely to be simplistic: lyrics may both speak vividly to female readers and seem distanced from the lives of actual women; the context of virginity may be as relevant to male as female religious readers; and lyrics may address complex theological questions. Romance conventions are taken up in secular lyrics, as are conventions familiar from fabliau and anti-feminist satire: women speakers are repeatedly used to voice male stereotypes. Finally, the essay demonstrates the challenges of reading the womanߣs voice in relation to the ߢFindernߣ manuscript, a fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century provincial miscellany which includes the names of five women, who, it has been argued, composed and copied a number of the lyrics written in it. Fuller demonstrates that the manuscript raises complex questions concerning the relationship between art and life which resonate across the genre.