This book, while acknowledging the changing nature of prophecy, is the first to argue for continuity in women's visionary experience, from medieval saints to radical Protestants. Dr Watt presents a series of historicised studies of women in England who lived between the early twelfth and the middle of the seventeenth centuries, and who claimed to speak and act for the deity or interpret divine will: they include Margery Kempe and the medieval visionaries,Elizabeth Barton (the `Holy Maid of Kent'), the Reformation martyr Anne Askew, and Lady Eleanor Davies as an example of a woman prophet of the Civil War. Throughout, the book argues that through prophecy women were often able to intervene in the religious and political discourse of the their times; the role of God's secretary gave women a rare opportunity to act and speak autonomously and publicly. Winner of the Foster Watson Memorial Gift for 1998. Dr DIANE WATT is Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.Dr DIANE WATTteaches in the Department of English at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth.
- ISBN10 0859915247
- ISBN13 9780859915243
- Publish Date 20 November 1997
- Publish Status Inactive
- Out of Print 28 May 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Imprint D.S. Brewer
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 208
- Language English