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Fasciculus Temporum: Extra-Textual Genealogy, Amanda Swinford

Extra-Textual Elements

Following the printed text of the Fasciculus temporum in PSU Library's codex is a concise, six-line, handwritten verse genealogy which lists the three husbands and three daughters, all named Mary, of St. Anne, the mother of Mary and maternal grandmother of Jesus.

The source of this addition is the Legenda aurea, a popular compilation of hagiographies, composed in Latin by Jacob Voragine (1230 - c.1298) in approximately 1270. This content was included by the publishers of certain other editions of the Fasciculus temporum, but is not included in the printed portion of the PSU edition.

"A Meruelous Thinge!": Elizabeth Of Spalbeek, Christina The Astonishing, And Performative Self-Abjection In Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms Douce 114, Murrielle Michaud

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Contributing to the spirited discussion regarding feminist and pro-feminine readings of Middle English hagiography, this dissertation challenges the tradition of grouping accounts of medieval holy women into a single genre that relies on stereotypes of meekness and obedience. I argue that fifteenth-century England saw a pro-feminine literary movement extolling the virtues of women who engaged in what I term “performative self-abjection,” a form of vicious self-renunciation and grotesque asceticism based on Julia Kristeva's model of the abject. The corollary of women's performative self-abjection is ex-gratia spiritual authority, public recognition, and independence, emphasized in the English corpus of fifteenth-century women’s hagiography. …