Women's Utopias in Early English Culture and Imaginati
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles “A New Kingdom of Femininity”: Women’s Utopias in Early English Culture and Imagination (1405-1666) A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Alexandra Cassatt Verini 2018 © Copyright by Alexandra Cassatt Verini 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION 'A New Kingdom of Femininity': Women’s Utopias in Early English Culture and Imagination (1405- 1666) by Alexandra Cassatt Verini Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Christine N. Chism, Co-Chair Professor Lowell Gallagher, Co-Chair 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 ii 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. iii The dissertation of Alexandra Cassatt Verini is approved. Sarah T. Kareem Eleanor K. Kaufman Charlene Villaseñor Black Christine N. Chism, Co-Chair Lowell Gallagher, Co-Chair iv Table of Contents List of Figures vi vii Acknowledgements vii-viii viii-ix Vita ix-x x-xii Introduction 1-30 1-30 Chapter 1 31-87 31-57 “Diving into the Wreck:” Bricolage Feminotopia in Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies Chapter 2 88-141 “My Cloister shall not be a Cloister of restraint but a place of freedom”: Restraint and Utopia at Syon Abbey Chapter 3 142-197 Not Yet: the Queer Times and Utopian Politics of Margery Kempe and Mary Ward Chapter 4 198-205 “We Are All Picturd in that Piece:” Women’s Romance Friendships and Critical Utopias Conclusion 236-240 Sisters of the Future Bibliography 241-263 211-282 v List of Figures Figure 1. London, British Library, MS Harley 4431, fol. 290r Figure 2. London, British Library, The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes (London: Henry Pepwell, 1521), C.13.a.18 Figure 3. Arundel Manuscript, Miniature 1 Figure 4. Arundel Manuscript, Miniature 7 Figure 5. The Painted Life, image 9, Congregatio Jesu, Augsburg Figure 6. The Painted Life, image 10, Congregatio Jesu, Augsburg Figure 7. The Painted Life, image 21, Congregatio Jesu, Augsburg Figure 8. The Painted Life, image 36, Congregatio Jesu, Augsburg vi Acknowledgements My heartfelt appreciation goes to the members of my dissertation committee. I thank my co- chair Chris Chism for her wonderful mentorship throughout this project, particularly for her guidance on classical and medieval friendship and for her close attention to the clarity of my prose. I thank my co-chair Lowell Gallagher for directing me to utopia in the first place, for introducing me to Mary Ward and for constantly helping me sort through the weeds of the project to find the big picture. Eleanor Kaufman provided astute theoretical advice on this dissertation as well as guidance throughout my graduate career. Sarah Kareem gave me invaluable feedback on my fourth chapter and was a welcome reminder of the importance of pitching my project to those beyond my field. Charlene Villaseñor Black generously offered an art historical perspective on visual components of my project. In addition, Arvind Thomas has been a valuable interlocutor on medieval devotional culture, and Matthew Fisher provided crucial early feedback on my ideas about Syon Abbey. I also thank professors from Columbia University Paul Strohm, whose course on Middle English romance drew me to the study of medieval literature, and Christopher Baswell, whose supervision of my master’s thesis laid the foundation for my future doctoral career. At other institutions, Hope Johnston of Baylor University generously shared with her microfilm of Royal 19 AXIX and Eddie Jones of the University of Exeter advised me on the university’s archival holdings from Syon Abbey. I also wish to thank the UCLA English Department, which funded a large portion of my research through the Dissertation Year Fellowship and a research travel grant. UCLA’s Art History Department generously supported my research with its Dickson Fellowship. Many thanks go to the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, which several times funded my travel to conferences where I presented my research. Working with manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, Cambridge University Library and Exeter University Special Collections has been instrumental to my project. I would vii particularly like to thank the librarians at the University of Exeter’s Special Collections for expertly guiding me through recently-acquired documents from Syon Abbey. I am also grateful to the sisters of the Congregatio Jesu in Augsburg, Germany, for generously welcoming me and giving me access to the Painted Life of Mary Ward as well as to information on the order’s history. This dissertation is, in large part, about friendship, and many friends have contributed to this project. To name just a few, Angelina del Balzo, Boyda Johnstone, Peter Murray, Nick Morgan, and Crescent Rainwater have given invaluable feedback on my work as well as much needed emotional support throughout my time in graduate school. My dearest friend Clara Feldmanstern has given constant encouragement from across the ocean. Adam Lesser’s generosity and love have buoyed me throughout my project, and his persistent wariness of the pre-modern has made me all the more determined to prove its relevance. I thank my family for their encouragement of what must have seemed like an increasingly odd career path. I particularly thank my mother, Madeleine James, whose own love of books and passion for the medieval started me on this path and whose constant support kept me going. This dissertation is for her. viii Vita 2006 B.A. History of Art Courtauld Institute of Art 2010 M.A. English Columbia University 2014 C.Phil English University of California, Los Angeles Articles “Performing Community and Place in the St Albans Psalter,” English Studies 98.1 (2017): 63-72. “Models of Medieval Female Friendship in Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies and The Book of Margery Kempe.” Feminist Studies 42, no. 2 (2016): 365-391. “Visions of Medieval Queenship: Gender and Genre in La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei.” Medieval Feminist Forum 50, no. 2 (2015): 5-32. “Reading Between the Lines: Female Friendship in Osbern Bokenham’s Life of St Katherine of Alexandria.” Magistra: Women’s Spirituality in History 17, no. 2 (2011): 53-70. Presentations “Women’s Complaint and Utopia.” The Shakespeare Association of America, 46th Annual Meeting, March 2018. “Imagining Female Community and the English Nation in the Career of Mary Ward.” Renaissance Society of America, March 2018. “Nuns as ‘Acting Authors’ in Liturgical Drama.” Women’s Literary Culture & the Medieval Canon International Conference at the University of Bergen, Norway, June 2017. “Service Learning, Social Justice and the Wife of Bath.” 52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo: Service Learning, Civic Engagement, and the Medieval Studies Classroom, May 2017. “Feeling Utopia: Women’s Selfhood, Authorship, and Spatial Imaginary in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania.” Women’s Writing and Subjectivity in Early Modern England, Renaissance Society of America, March 2017. “Keywords: a Roundtable.” Entertaining the Idea: Shakespeare, Philosophy, Performance, UCLA Center for 17th & 18th Century Studies Core Program, October 2016 and April 2017. “Spiritual Utopia and Female Community at Post-Reformation Syon Abbey.” On the Eve of the ix Reformation, University of Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium, October 2016. “Mirrors of Devotion: Collective Female Agency at Syon Abbey.” Gender, Politics and Agency Conference, Centre for Gender Studies, University of Winchester, August 2016. “Between Women: Uneasy Alliances at Syon Abbey.” 50TH International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo: Session sponsored by the Syon Abbey Society and the Hagiography Society, May 2015.