Scream And Whisper From The Marginalized People-a Study Of Late Medieval European Female Writers

The female writing is an essential part of literature in Medieval Europe, whichhas received much attention of Western researchers since the later half of the20thcentury, and is the hot topic in the field of Medieval literature and cultural research.In China, the research of female writers in Medieval Europe has just started and thereare many things to do. The dissertation studies the representative female writers, suchas Mechthild, Hadewijch, Marguerite Porete, Christine de Pizan and tries to analyzethe wide and constant influence of these female writers on social life and culture inlate Middle Ages.From the late Middle Ages after the13thcentury, the combination of secularreligious movement and New Mysticism promoted the booming of vernacular writingof mysticism. The Beguines was the most important branch at that time, who wereunsatisfied with the religious hierarchy system and religious privilege of the Church,Because of their “quasi-religious” practice mode and tried to get discourse power ofmarginal people in religious field through vernacular writing. Humanism, which wasoriginated from Italy, spread to Western European countries in the late Middle Agesand was widely accepted by intellectuals. Christine de Pizan, a French female writerand the most representative female intellectual writer of the perior, wrote a series ofworks that concerned social gender and politics and deeply expressed the interventionand thinking of female writers about social public affairs.The dissertation contains three parts. The first part includes introduction and thebackground of female writing in the late Middle Ages. The first chapter introduces thegeneral situation about the research of female writing in the late Middle Ages at homeand abroad, and introduces Medieval female writers briefly. The second chaptermakes a brief analysis of the social historical situation and cultural background in thelate Middle Ages.The second part includes four chapters, mainly covering the analysis andinterpretation of the Beguine mystical writings. On the background of the social lifeand religious movements in the late Middle Ages, the third chapter gives introduction to the cause and the development of the Beguine writers, and tries to explore thein-depth cultural connotation embodied by this female religious movement. Thechapter studies the three Beguine writers, marginalized mystics, and tries toreinterpret the mystical union which is the core of New Mysticism in the late MiddleAges and reveals the unique cultural constructional significance of female mysticalwritings in this period. The fourth chapter, taking the example of Mechthild’s TheFlowing Light of The Godhead, inspects how she subverts the binary oppositions andhierarchy system in the belief fields and how she establishes the core position for theLaity who were marginalized by the church in the belief fields. Mechthild gives upthe external medium--church, represents the Eucharist within the soul, reconstructsthe chain of redemption in her work, and challenges the orthodox doctrine of churchconsciously.The fifth chapter, through analyzing Hadewijch’s writings, explores howfemale mystics construct a new god-human relationship by adopting the erotic wordsin the Christian mysticism. The mystic love between god and human without mediumenables the Laity to get rid of the external spirit shackles and thus get to know andbecome oneness with God in one spirit. For Hadewijch, the mystic love is no longerlimited to the soul’s self-emancipation. She hopes the readers will imitate Christ andpractice their faith by serving others in the social life. The sixth chapter studies thewritings of Marguerite Porete. Through interpretation of The Mirror of Simple Souls,this chapter explores the impact of the change of ideology in the late Middle Ages onthe traditional theology and how the Laity from cities find new route of faith andredemption outside the church. Porete resists the church’s privileges of being amedium by promoting the indistinctive union of soul and God. Her diversified writingstyle and introspection on faith and reason expressed the diversified demands ofpersonal identity in the late middle ages.The third part studies the French female writer Christine de Pizan. Compared withBeguine writers who are concerned with issues of faith and redemption, Pizan paysmore attention to people’s social life. Sexual relations and politics are the core themesof her works. Pizan establishes her eligible identity of author and authority throughautobiographical writing, in which she criticizes and exposes the unsettled politicalcondition caused by greed and dotage of the ruling class, as well as gender contradiction caused by misogyny. In her works, no matter the sexual writing againstmisogyny or the political writing to pursue peace and justice, both of them are guidedby the ethics and moral views. In her works, she not only commits herself to establishcompletely a new social identity for women belittled by misogyny, but also arouses inthe French people the sense of their national identity through eulogizing Joan of Arc,the female hero.The epilogue of the dissertation briefly sums up the influence of female writingsin the late Middle Ages on posterity. The Beguine mystical writings expressedpeople’s desire for freedom of religion in the late Middle Ages and promoted theReformation in the16thcentury. Pizan’s political writings were widely circulated inthe Western European courts in the15thand the16thcenturies. To some degree, Pizanpromoted the development and establishment of French national identity, whosegender writings also initiated the introspection and discussion on sexual relations andfemale identity of the following humanists. She is undoubtedly rated as the pioneer ofmodern feminism writing in Europe.