'Why have you been silent for so long?': Women and letter writing in the early middle ages, 700-900

This dissertation intervenes in a long-standing paradigm that women were largely passive subjects in early medieval society. This passivity has been especially attributed to the strict limitations on women's intellectual and religious authority, and to the resultant silence of Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian women in the extant sources. Numerous scholars such as Valerie Garver, Cristina La Rocca, Regine Le Jan, Rosamond McKitterick, Janet Nelson, and Julia Smith have undertaken dynamic studies to probe this assumption about early medieval women's imposed silence and passivity, finding innovative ways to reveal women's unique contributions to early medieval society and spirituality which had been previously overlooked or misjudged. It is within this groundbreaking tradition of scholarship that this dissertation is situated. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).