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Papers by Alexandra Verini

Women's Literary Cultures in the Global Middle Ages, Apr 4, 2023

Springer International Publishing eBooks, 2022

Medieval Feminist Forum

Review of Jennifer C. Edwards's "Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers’ ... more Review of Jennifer C. Edwards's "Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers’ Abbey of Sainte-Croix" by Alexandra Verini.

English Studies, 2016

This paper focuses on the intersection of performance, community and space in the twelfth-century... more This paper focuses on the intersection of performance, community and space in the twelfth-century St Albans Psalter (Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS St Godehard 1). While this psalter is typically read in terms of its designation for the anchoress Christina of Markyate, this essay focuses on its capacity as a communal production. Beginning with the Anglo-Norman Vie de St Alexis, in which the oral performance of a letter transforms a beggar into a saint, I argue that the book's texts and images collectively display how the performance of words transforms identities and how people joined as a community through such words create a shared sense of place, an assertion that would have been confirmed by the psalms at the end of the manuscript. The St Albans Psalter as a whole exemplifies the formation of communal identity and space through the shared experience of books, offering a blueprint for a monastery in the process of shaping its own identity.

This dissertation uncovers an overlooked history of women’s utopian thought that has its foundati... more This dissertation uncovers an overlooked history of women’s utopian thought that has its foundations in the medieval period. Challenging scholarly narratives that position Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) as the foundation of utopian thought, I argue that medieval and early modern women’s writing produced and/or read in English contexts engaged in unrecognized forms of utopianism that reemerge in contemporary conversations about gender and sexuality. I thus trace an earlier lineage of what Mary Louis Pratt calls “feminotopias,” idealized worlds of female self-realization and social harmony, from the fifteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries. But I also expand Pratt’s notion of feminotopia by showing how writers from French author Christine de Pizan to religious leader Mary Ward extended utopia beyond its narrow generic definition as an ideal world into a heuristic for imagining the world otherwise. Through such utopian thinking, women generated gynocentric models of identity, friendship, and community. Writing at moments of social and political tensions, the women in my project collectively imagine ways for communities to negotiate difference—between individual women, between the past and future, humans and nature, and religious and secular life. Reading their writings together builds a picture of how early women engaged in radical, political thought that uses the past to map the future. Placing early women’s writings into conversations with post-modern feminist and queer theory, my project reveals how the past can illuminate the present by offering insight into a transhistorical effort to resist oppression and imagine new possibilities. This dissertation thus generates a literary history that is not exclusively informed by geography or periodization but rather focuses on structures of feeling that strive for a better future

Medieval Feminist Forum, 2010

Much recent scholarship has explored the relevance of female martyrs' lives for medieval fema... more Much recent scholarship has explored the relevance of female martyrs' lives for medieval female readers. St. Katherine of Alexandria, famous for her conversion of pagan philosophers to Christianity, miraculous breaking of the wheel and beheading at the hands of pagan Emperor Maxentius, has received particular attention in this regard and has been the focus of studies by Katherine Lewis, Karen Winstead and Jacqueline Jenkins among others.1 Such work has revealed how, from its beginnings to its later retellings, the Katherine legend was repeatedly refashioned for particular authences; having served as a model for twelfthcentury anchoresses, the life was later transformed to appeal to secular aristocratic women. While recent studies have admirably recovered connections between Katherine and female readers, they have passed over the friendship between the saint and her convert Empress Augusta, which appears in most versions of the legend. The bond between Katherine and Augusta might...

Abstract:This article argues that Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania and Marga... more Abstract:This article argues that Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania and Margaret Cavendish’s The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World engage in an unrecognized form of utopianism that is situated in women’s friendship. This utopianism departs from the traditional definition of utopia as an idealized geographical place and instead acts as a heuristic device for imagining alternatives to the present. As women’s friendships in these works blur binaries to imagine new categories, they enact a form of utopian thinking that offers new political and philosophical possibilities while remaining aware of their limitations. This article thus makes the case for Wroth’s unrecognized influence on Cavendish’s work as well as for a new understanding of early modern women’s friendship and utopianism.

Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies

This paper focuses on the intersection of performance, community and space in the twelfth-century... more This paper focuses on the intersection of performance, community and space in the twelfth-century St Albans Psalter (Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS St Godehard 1). While this psalter is typically read in terms of its designation for the anchoress Christina of Markyate, this essay focuses on its capacity as a communal production. Beginning with the Anglo-Norman Vie de St Alexis, in which the oral performance of a letter transforms a beggar into a saint, I argue that the book’s texts and images collectively display how the performance of words transforms identities and how people joined as a community through such words create a shared sense of place, an assertion that would have been confirmed by the psalms at the end of the manuscript. The St Albans Psalter as a whole exemplifies the formation of communal identity and space through the shared experience of books, offering a blueprint for a monastery in the process of shaping its own identity.

Women's Literary Cultures in the Global Middle Ages, Apr 4, 2023

Springer International Publishing eBooks, 2022

Medieval Feminist Forum

Review of Jennifer C. Edwards's "Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers’ ... more Review of Jennifer C. Edwards's "Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers’ Abbey of Sainte-Croix" by Alexandra Verini.

English Studies, 2016

This paper focuses on the intersection of performance, community and space in the twelfth-century... more This paper focuses on the intersection of performance, community and space in the twelfth-century St Albans Psalter (Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS St Godehard 1). While this psalter is typically read in terms of its designation for the anchoress Christina of Markyate, this essay focuses on its capacity as a communal production. Beginning with the Anglo-Norman Vie de St Alexis, in which the oral performance of a letter transforms a beggar into a saint, I argue that the book's texts and images collectively display how the performance of words transforms identities and how people joined as a community through such words create a shared sense of place, an assertion that would have been confirmed by the psalms at the end of the manuscript. The St Albans Psalter as a whole exemplifies the formation of communal identity and space through the shared experience of books, offering a blueprint for a monastery in the process of shaping its own identity.

This dissertation uncovers an overlooked history of women’s utopian thought that has its foundati... more This dissertation uncovers an overlooked history of women’s utopian thought that has its foundations in the medieval period. Challenging scholarly narratives that position Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) as the foundation of utopian thought, I argue that medieval and early modern women’s writing produced and/or read in English contexts engaged in unrecognized forms of utopianism that reemerge in contemporary conversations about gender and sexuality. I thus trace an earlier lineage of what Mary Louis Pratt calls “feminotopias,” idealized worlds of female self-realization and social harmony, from the fifteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries. But I also expand Pratt’s notion of feminotopia by showing how writers from French author Christine de Pizan to religious leader Mary Ward extended utopia beyond its narrow generic definition as an ideal world into a heuristic for imagining the world otherwise. Through such utopian thinking, women generated gynocentric models of identity, friendship, and community. Writing at moments of social and political tensions, the women in my project collectively imagine ways for communities to negotiate difference—between individual women, between the past and future, humans and nature, and religious and secular life. Reading their writings together builds a picture of how early women engaged in radical, political thought that uses the past to map the future. Placing early women’s writings into conversations with post-modern feminist and queer theory, my project reveals how the past can illuminate the present by offering insight into a transhistorical effort to resist oppression and imagine new possibilities. This dissertation thus generates a literary history that is not exclusively informed by geography or periodization but rather focuses on structures of feeling that strive for a better future

Medieval Feminist Forum, 2010

Much recent scholarship has explored the relevance of female martyrs' lives for medieval fema... more Much recent scholarship has explored the relevance of female martyrs' lives for medieval female readers. St. Katherine of Alexandria, famous for her conversion of pagan philosophers to Christianity, miraculous breaking of the wheel and beheading at the hands of pagan Emperor Maxentius, has received particular attention in this regard and has been the focus of studies by Katherine Lewis, Karen Winstead and Jacqueline Jenkins among others.1 Such work has revealed how, from its beginnings to its later retellings, the Katherine legend was repeatedly refashioned for particular authences; having served as a model for twelfthcentury anchoresses, the life was later transformed to appeal to secular aristocratic women. While recent studies have admirably recovered connections between Katherine and female readers, they have passed over the friendship between the saint and her convert Empress Augusta, which appears in most versions of the legend. The bond between Katherine and Augusta might...

Abstract:This article argues that Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania and Marga... more Abstract:This article argues that Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania and Margaret Cavendish’s The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World engage in an unrecognized form of utopianism that is situated in women’s friendship. This utopianism departs from the traditional definition of utopia as an idealized geographical place and instead acts as a heuristic device for imagining alternatives to the present. As women’s friendships in these works blur binaries to imagine new categories, they enact a form of utopian thinking that offers new political and philosophical possibilities while remaining aware of their limitations. This article thus makes the case for Wroth’s unrecognized influence on Cavendish’s work as well as for a new understanding of early modern women’s friendship and utopianism.

Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies

This paper focuses on the intersection of performance, community and space in the twelfth-century... more This paper focuses on the intersection of performance, community and space in the twelfth-century St Albans Psalter (Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS St Godehard 1). While this psalter is typically read in terms of its designation for the anchoress Christina of Markyate, this essay focuses on its capacity as a communal production. Beginning with the Anglo-Norman Vie de St Alexis, in which the oral performance of a letter transforms a beggar into a saint, I argue that the book’s texts and images collectively display how the performance of words transforms identities and how people joined as a community through such words create a shared sense of place, an assertion that would have been confirmed by the psalms at the end of the manuscript. The St Albans Psalter as a whole exemplifies the formation of communal identity and space through the shared experience of books, offering a blueprint for a monastery in the process of shaping its own identity.

English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700: New Kingdoms of Womanhood uncovers a tradition of w... more English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700: New Kingdoms of Womanhood uncovers a tradition of women’s utopianism that extends back to medieval women’s monasticism, overturning accounts of utopia that trace its origins solely to Thomas More. As enclosed spaces in which women wielded authority that was unavailable to them in the outside world, medieval and early modern convents were self-consciously engaged in reworking pre-existing cultural heritage to project desired proto-feminist futures. The utopianism developed within the English convent percolated outwards to unenclosed women's spiritual communities such as Mary Ward's Institute of the Blessed Virgin and the Ferrar family at Little Gidding. Convent-based utopianism further acted as an unrecognized influence on the first English women’s literary utopias by authors such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell. Collectively, these female communities forged a mode of utopia that drew on the past to imagine new possibilities for themselves as well as for their larger religious and political communities. Tracking utopianism from the convent to the literary page over a period of 300 years, New Kingdoms writes a new history of medieval and early modern women’s intellectual work and expands the concept of utopia itself.