Books by Liz Herbert McAvoy

During the Middle Ages, the arresting motif of the walled garden - especially in its manifestation as a sacred or love-inflected hortus conclusus - was a common literary device.

An examination of the growth and different varieties of anchoritism throughout medieval Europe.

One of the most important medieval writers studied in historical and literary context.

An examination of ways in which the writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe were affected by traditional and contemporary attitudes towards women.

Translation and facing text of an important female-authored work from the late middle ages.

This volume focuses on women's literary history in Britain between 700 and 1500. It brings to the fore a wide range of women's literary activity undertaken in Latin, Welsh and Anglo-Norman alongside that of the English vernacular, demanding a rethinking of the traditions of literary history, and ultimately the concept of 'writing' itself.

Ranging from studies of the influence of desert eremiticism upon a variety of expressions of religious enclosure in England to the sexualized spirituality of the high Middle Ages, this book contains essays that demonstrate how discourses of anchoritic enclosure were utilized to different ends at different periods throughout the Middle Ages.