Katherine Group

Book section

The Katherine Group is a label given to five Early Middle English prose texts found together in one early-thirteenth-century manuscript: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 34. The first three texts (The Martyrdom of Saint Katherine, The Life and Passion of Saint Margaret, and The Life and Passion of Saint Juliana) are “hagiographies,” or saints’ lives. The fourth, Holy Maidenhood, is a treatise encouraging the maintenance of virginity. The fifth, The Guardianship of the Soul, is an allegory in which the soul is likened to a household that needs protection. All five texts are associated through dialect and manuscript history with Ancrene Wisse (Guide for Anchoresses) and a group of meditations known as the Wooing Group. The audience for the Katherine Group, as for Ancrene Wisse and the Wooing Group, included women who lived as anchorites (religious recluses). Scholarship on the Katherine Group has examined a range of subjects, including embodiment, feminism, gender performance, biblical contexts, and affect.

Authors: Lazikani, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Host title: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages
• Place of publication: Cham, Switzerland
• Publication date: 2022-10-21
• Acceptance date: 2022-02-28
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_25-1
• EISBN: 9783030762193
• ISBN: 9783030762193
• Language: English
• Keywords: hagiography; Anchoritic literature; devotional writing; Middle English