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I, A Saint; I, A Sinner: Rereading Female Sanctity In Chaucer’S “Lyfe Of Seinte Cecile” And Kate Horsley’S Confessions Of A Pagan Nun, Lillian Constance

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This thesis compares a medieval and modern text, Chaucer’s “Lyfe of Seinte Cecile” and Kate Horsley’s Confessions of a Pagan Nun," to explore female spirituality. Horsley writes in the twenty-first century, a time of significantly more opportunity for women compared to the fourteenth-century world of Chaucer. The latter belongs to the virgin martyr sub-genre of medieval hagiography, a genre Horsley mimics. These differences aside, both texts are revealing of Christianity's ability both to empower and to oppress women. A comparison of Horsley’stwenty-first century rendition of the life of a medieval woman with Chaucer’s fourteenth-century version exposes the problems …