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4 - ‘The ladies have made me quite fat’: Authors and Patrons at Barking Abbey

from I - BARKING ABBEY AND ITS ANGLO-SAXON CONTEXT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2013

Thomas O'Donnell
Affiliation:
Fordham University in New York City
Jennifer N. Brown
Affiliation:
Marymount Manhattan College
Donna Alfano Bussell
Affiliation:
University of Illinois-Springfield
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Summary

The literary culture of Barking Abbey during the High Middle Ages was founded on the enthusiastic welcome had there by out-of-house authors. The nuns' patronage shaped the careers of some of the most remarkable ecclesiastical writers of the age – Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Osbert of Clare, Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence – establishing a vibrant tradition of commemorative literature from which would emerge the in-house vitae of St Edward and St Catherine. But understanding the nature of the nuns' literary activity before the time of Clemence of Barking requires us to think about patronage during the twelfth century in a new way. The image of a static, hierarchical relationship between patron and client must be discarded in favour of a model that recognizes medieval patronage as a vital exchange, in which the interests of both parties play across a wider, shifting field of collaborators and competitors, allies and rivals.

I will argue that in the uncertainty of post-Conquest England, Barking acquired a rich literary corpus, which defined the Barking sisters' collective identity through their relationship to their relics and their past. Furthermore, the act of patronage itself was used by the Barking community as a way to assert and enlarge its presence within a fluid and expanding network of patrons and artists across southern England.

Type
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Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture
Authorship and Authority in a Female Community
, pp. 94 - 114
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2012

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