Description:
Writing Habits: Historicism, Philosophy, and English Benedictine Convents, 1600-1800 offers a groundbreaking exploration of the literary and spiritual worlds created by English Benedictine nuns living in exile after the Reformation. Drawing on hundreds of surviving manuscripts and books, Jaime Goodrich reveals how these religious women used writing to cultivate identity, preserve tradition, and build enduring communities across generations. Combining literary analysis, historical research, and the philosophical insights of Martin Buber, this innovative study illuminates overlooked voices in early modern culture and demonstrates the vital role of convent writing in shaping religious, intellectual, and literary history. Essential for scholars of literature, religion, women's studies, and early modern Europe.
Review Quotes:
"Goodrich presents by far the most cohesive account of the six English Benedictine convents that were founded in France and Flanders following the Dissolution, arguing that the need to create a new English monasticism offers a privileged space for us to investigate community formation. Her rigorous analysis of administrative, spiritual, polemical, and historical/life writing (grounded on over 1,000 surviving manuscripts and books) breaks new ground in the depth and breadth of its analysis and in its advancing of a feminist philosophical practice for early modern women's writing."--Marie-Louise Coolahan, author of Women, Writing, and Language in Early Modern Ireland
"This is not a book to skim over, or to read once and summarize for a bibliographical note; it is a philosophical journey that rewards re-reading."--Sixteenth Century Journal LVI/1