From Mildrith to Muriel: networks of early English women’s literacy and collaborative literate production in the past and present

This dissertation posits that medieval scriptoria and the modern-day writing center have a shared history and shared practices. No architectural evidence for scriptoria has survived from early medieval England. What we do possess is manuscript evidence and small archaeological finds for scriptoria from this period. This fact complicates our ability to reconstruct these scribal spaces and suggests a need for inventive approaches for doing so. Writing centers offer a modern-day collection of well-researched practices and approaches to space that can be explored for possibilities and implications for early medieval English scriptoria. In addition to this, early medieval English asynchronous scriptoria, as demonstrated by the efficacy of the Boniface Correspondence, provide an established example of successful asynchronous teaching and community building. Given the anxieties which still exist surrounding asynchronous writing center appointments and whether the one-to-one writing conversation and connection can truly be re-created, I recommend here that writing centers look back to this asynchronous ancestor for examples of and affirmation of asynchronous practices. Chapter one of this dissertation introduces the main case study of this project: a lineage of abbesses connected to the double monastery and scriptorium at Minster-in-Thanet in Kent. As the evidence demonstrates, each of these women was highly involved in scriptoria and teaching literate acts to their students. While the evidence makes it difficult to pull out scribal pedagogies specifically, this chapter engages with frameworks from medieval studies such as Lisa Weston’s “emulative pedagogy” and Irina Dumistrescu’s “pedagogically useful emotion” to see what threads of educational values can be traced between all four women of the lineage. Chapter Two engages Jaqueline Jones Royster’s framework of Critical Imagination and Saidiya Hartman’s framework of Critical Fabulation in order to argue that, while we do not have archaeological evidence that can definitively prove what early medieval scriptoria looked like, we can indeed theorize about how writing spaces were constructed mentally and physically by examining the educational texts that the scribes at places like Minster-in-Thanet would have used. The two main texts examined in this chapter, The Benedictine Rule and Aldhelm’s Prosa de Virginitate, indicate key approaches to understanding and creating space that would have been popularized amongst early English monastics, especially nuns. Chapter Three seeks to demonstrate that asynchronous writing center appointments are just as efficacious at community building as synchronous-online or synchronous-in-person sessions. To do so, I analyze the Boniface Correspondence and how the surviving letters indicate a strong sense of community and shared practice that was maintained and experienced through letter writing, research, and emotional support. I indicate the necessity of further study of asynchronous writing center practices while establishing that approaches unique to online appointments are already in place and functioning successfully. This project serves as a stepping stone for future studies which find writing centers and scriptoria to be key lenses into one another, bringing greater understanding to writing, community, and meaning making.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Matresse, Elizabeth Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wisniewski, Carolyn
• Trilling, Renee R
• Barrett, Robert W
• Russell, Lindsay R
• Mak, Bonnie

• Medieval Literature, Medieval Studies, Minster-in-Thanet, Literacy, Collaboration, Writing, Medieval Nuns, Scriptoria, Writing Centers, Writing Studies

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Elizabeth Matresse

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132670

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/132670