ancient Greek epitaphs: Herais & Sozomene for their husbands

Given the prevalence of anti-men gender bigotry, some may wonder: do women truly love men?

man alone, beseeching

Ancient Greek epitaphs show the long history of women’s love for men. Here’s an epitaph from the second or third century:

I Herais lie here, stranger, five times seven {years old}
And I urge you, my husband,
Not to keep weeping. For the thread of the Moirai calls everyone. [1]

The epitaph begins with a conventional first-person address to the conventionally anonymous passerby (“stranger”). The first verse provides information that remains conventional on gravestones to this day: the name of the deceased (Herais) and her age at death (five times seven = thirty-five). The epitaph’s second verse, however, suggests that Herais selected/dictated her epitaph just before her death.[2] Herais personally addresses her weeping husband. She urges him to move beyond his grief at her death.

Personal words from women are relatively rare in the ancient historical record. The long-established, long-misinterpreted literature of men’s sexed protests describes suffering and injustices that men have endured from women and within marriage. But not all men were like that. Some men wept when their wives died. Moreover, some women did not relish their husbands’ weeping. Herais didn’t want her husband to be weeping. After expressing that concern, so poignant to readers today, Herais returns to conventional expression in ancient Greek epitaphs. Ancient Greeks commonly attributed the course of persons’ lives to fate (the Moirai). The distinctive, personal words in Herais’s epitaph are her words of comfort for her grieving, weeping husband.

Another ancient Greek epitaph provides women’s words with more subtle poetry. In the second or third century, Sozomene had inscribed for her husband Crispinus this epitaph:

Here is the tomb of swift-fated, mindful Crispinus
For whom no stock of children will later appear.
A destructive Ker overcame them both before him.
So his wedded wife Sozomene inscribed his gravestone
For mortals still to be born to learn from. [3]

The term “swift-fated” suggests that Crispinus died young. He lived long enough, however, to have two children. Those children predeceased him. With bracketing of the first verse, the subsequent verses are a chiasma of thematic contrasts. A destructive Ker (death-spirit) killed their children. Sozomene in response inscribed stone. For Crispinus “no stock of children will later appear.” But Sozomene’s inscription offers teaching “for mortals still to be born to learn from.” A teacher gives birth to knowledge in students. His students are like children to him. The first verse describes Crispinus as “mindful” with a Greek word associated with the philosophical ideal of prudence. With her epitaph, Sozomene lovingly provides for Crispinus to have more children in the life of the mind.

Women have long loved men and cared for men’s welfare. Men are more responsible for anti-men gender bigotry than are women. Men seeking compassionate help would best look to women.

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Notes:

[1] Epitaph (gravestone inscription) from Amorgus, among the southeastern Greek islands. From Greek trans. Hansen (1998) p. 336, from Greek text in Peek (1955) p. 93, no. 372. Some epitaphs were composed as literary pieces and never actually engraved on gravestones.

[2] Widespread conventions in gravestone epitaphs suggests that engravers offered customers choices among standard verses. A common verse: “It is not dying that is grievous, since it is destined for all, … {continued in various ways, e.g. but that I died before the journal completed the review of my article, etc.} Id. pp. 329-332.

[3] Epitaph (gravestone inscription) from Berrhoea. Βέρροια, now commonly transliterated as Veria, is in northern Greece. From Greek trans. Hansen (1998) p. 335, from Greek text in Peek (1955) p. 33, no. 107. The Greek word translated as “mindful” is πινυτου (pinytou).

[image] Southern Barbarians in Japan. Painting, ink, color, and gold on paper. Edo period (1515-1868), Japan. Accession number F1965.22-23. Thanks to Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

References:

Hansen, William F., ed. 1998. Anthology of ancient Greek popular literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Peek, Werner. 1955. Griechische Vers-Inschriften. Band I, Grab-Epigramme. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

women and men on medieval women writers

A free, online book, Medieval Women Writers’ Loving Concern for Men, is now available worldwide. This book shows the public importance of medieval women writers’ outstanding work. For teachers of medieval literature, this book can usefully serve as a supplement to Peter Dronke’s erudite and influential book, Women Writers of the Middle Ages.

ghostly representation of women medieval writers

While Dronke’s book was published in 1984, women writers of the Middle Ages still have not been adequately appreciated.  Dronke in the preface described his book as:

an affirmation of the intrinsic value of writings that have been — I believe quite unjustly — undervalued in the past. It is not necessary here to dwell on the history and causes of this, or on the diverse attempts to belittle the rare women whose writings did achieve fame. [1]

The term “rare” applied to women has roots in the Latin phrase rara avis (“rare bird”) in Juvenal’s widely and unjustly disparaged Satire 6.[2] Belittling women implies not taking women seriously and not recognizing their power and importance. Juvenal’s Satire 6, in contrast, fully recognizes the enormity of women’s importance. While Dronke doesn’t dwell on belittling rare women, he provides sufficient examples:

It will suffice to recall, by way of illustration, that in 1867 Hrotsvitha’s works were alleged to be a hoax perpetrated by the humanist Conrad Celtes, who first edited the principal manuscript, and that this ‘discovery’ gave rise to some coarsely mocking verses; or that till quite recent times, notwithstanding Hildegard of Bingen’s meticulous account of her method of composition, scholars exaggerated the role of her men secretaries to the point of implying that they were the real begetters of her works; again, speculations about male authorship of some of Heloise’s letters are still with us, and are still treated much more seriously — there’s the rub — than for instance the suggestion that Bacon, or Marlowe, wrote the works of Shakespeare. [3]

Today, men die from violence four times more frequently that women do. Men are incarcerated for doing nothing more than having consensual sex and being too poor to pay for state-forced financial fatherhood. If humanistic scholars don’t care about those facts, they might consider: the share of men who have read a work of literature in the past year is only 68% of that for women. Men receive only 56% of the total number of advanced degrees in study of literature and the humanities that women receive.[4] Adequately appreciating medieval women writers depends on adequately appreciating these realities.

Scholars have not adequately recognized the importance of medieval women writers for men. Of the eight English-language scholarly reviews of Women Writers of the Middle Ages, six were written by women. One reviewer, who is now recognized as one of the most eminent medieval historians, wrote:

Dronke still speaks of women writers too much in the context of their relationship to men. … his choice of which passages and texts to emphasize still focuses more than the nature of women’s writing itself warrants on the ways in which women perceive men and their relationship to men. [5]

As Medieval Women Writers’ Loving Concern for Men makes clear, Dronke wrote relatively little on medieval women writers’ relationships with men. The way that medieval women writers perceived men and showed concern for men is an outstanding feature of their work. Much scholarship doesn’t recognize that medieval women writers didn’t write just for women. Medieval women writers wrote for men in ways that should not remain beyond understanding today.

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Notes:

[1] Dronke (1984) p. ix.

[2] Juvenal, Satire 6.165: rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno (“a rare bird on earth and most similar to a black swan”).

[3] Dronke (1984) p. ix, omitted footnote scornfully cites Georges Dubay questioning attribution of work to Marie de France (such as this) and Heloise (such as this). Dubay, like others, evidently lacked appreciation for medieval women writers’ concern for men. Questioning attribution of work to women writers now tends to generate intense hostility. Consider, for example, the question of whether Mary Shelley actually authored Frankenstein. See Lauritsen (2007) Preface, Ch. 5 & Ch. 7. Here’s some online discussion of the handwriting-authorship fallacy with respect to Frankenstein and prefaces to the 1818 and 1831 versions of Frankenstein. Stevenson’s massive tome on women Latin poets states, “Mary Shelley read Latin and Greek as well as French and Italian.” Stevenson (2005) p. 425. That statement doesn’t fairly represent Mary Shelley’s classical learning.

[4] U.S. masters and Ph.D. degrees conferred, 2010-11, compiled from U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Educational Statistics, 2012. The compiled data and calculations are available in the humanities gender protrusion spreadsheet (alternate Excel version).

[5] Bynum (1985) p. 328. Bynum is now Professor emerita of Medieval European History at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute of Advanced Study in  Princeton, New Jersey. The single man reviewer was Ralph Hexter. He is now Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor of the University of California, Davis. For the names of all seven reviewers, with institutional affiliations at the time of review and journal in which the review appeared, see the Dronke reviewers spreadsheet (alternate Excel version).

[image] Soft Bathtub (Model) — Ghost Version. Claes Oldenburg, 1966. Canvas, wood, acrylic paint, and mixed media. Item 1998 (98.18), Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC. Douglas Galbi’s photograph at Hirschhorn Museum.

References:

Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1985. Review. “Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua († 203) to Marguerite Porete († 1310).” Modern Language Quarterly. 46 (3): 326-329.

Dronke, Peter. 1984. Women writers of the Middle Ages: a critical study of texts from Perpetua († 203) to Marguerite Porete († 1310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lauritsen, John. 2007. The man who wrote Frankenstein. Dorchester, MA: Pagan Press.

Stevenson, Jane. 2005. Women Latin poets: language, gender, and authority, from antiquity to the eighteenth century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dafydd ap Gwilym's penis under law in medieval Welsh poetry

The fourteenth-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym addressed his penis in poetry. If even noticed, the criminalization of men’s sexuality tends to be seen as a bizarre aberration of twenty-first-century elite culture. Yet that tendency in law can also be perceived in this penis poem from fourteenth-century Wales. Dafydd ap Gwilym began his penis poem with forthright recognition of the force of law on his penis:

By God, cock, there’s need to keep you
Under guard with eye and hand,
Stiff-headed pole, with this law-suit,
Even better from now on.
Cunt’s net-float, because of complaint,
Needs must your snout be snaffled
To keep you from being indicted
Again. [1]

Old French fabliaux disparage and devalue men’s genitals. The thirteenth-century account of the nun of Watton shows relatively little concern about viciously castrating a man for nothing more than having consensual sex. Embracing social disparagement and legal suppression of men’s genitals, Dafydd ap Gwilym subtly created a counter-melody proclaiming the value of his penis:

You’re a loathsome rolling-pin,
Scrotum’s horn: don’t rise, don’t waggle,
Noble ladies’ New-Year’s-gift
…
You’re longer than a large man’s thigh,
Long night’s roving, hundred nights’ chisel,
Auger like the signpost’s pillar,
Leatherhead that’s called a shaft.
You’re a sceptre that causes lust,
A girl’s bare arse’s lid-bolt.

The phrase “loathsome rolling-pin” explicitly signals contempt and implicitly vicious violence. Horns are associated with the devil and cuckoldry. But horns are also associated with strength and plenty. A sceptre is a kingly sign, while a lid-bolt performs a common function. For noble women, men’s sexuality is a New Year’s gift.

Noble women eagerly waiting for the coming of a New Year must fight against disparagement and criminalization of men’s sexuality. Dafydd ap Gwilym’s poem ends with poignant irony in addressing his penis:

You are a trouser-problem personified,
suede-necked, gander-glide,
congenital liar, pod from which indecency has sprung,
nail on which injunctions are hung.

Now you’re once more been brought to book
you should bow your head, you children’s dibbling-hook.
It’s so hard to keep you in check,
you pathetic little pecker-peck.
Your master will stand in the dock because of you,
because you’re rotten through-and-through. [2]

Universities’ star-chamber proceedings on claims of sexual assault stage obtuse, ignorant readings of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s penis poem.

tide comes in on vagina

Gwerful Mechain’s medieval Welsh vagina poem shows sharply contrasting public values. She begins by complaining that poets praise all of a woman’s body except “the place where children are conceived.”[3] That’s because most men lack the boldness to affirm the center of their sexual interest. Predating the Vagina Monologues by nearly half a millennium, Gwerful Mechain’s poem lavishly praises the vagina:

You’re a piece with unfailing power,
a faultless court of fat’s plumage,
Here’s my credo: the quiff is lovely,
Circlet of broad-edged lips,
Dingle deeper than hand or ladle,
Trench to hold a two-handed prick,
Cunt there next the full-cheeked rump,
Songbook with red facing pages. [4]

Gwerful Mechain ended her vagina poem by invoking God’s protection for the flawless vagina:

Noble forest, flawless gift,
Soft frieze, fur for fair bollocks,
Girl’s thick grove, precious welcome’s round,
Splendid bush, may God preserve it.

Gwerful Mechain’s vagina poem isn’t famous. It doesn’t need to be. Versions of it run naturally through primates’ minds.

In a poem complaining about jealous wives, Gwerful Mechain declared women’s sexual interest in a “bigger than average cock.” She boasted, “every big-cocked lover is after me.”[5] Then she complained that women with such men value them too highly. According to Mechain, a wife values a “big prick” more than her father, her wealth, her clothes and jewelry, her mother, her brothers, her sister, and all her possessions. Old French fabliaux describe men being valued merely for their penises.  Mechain’s poem emphasizes that demeaning of a man’s person. She doesn’t praise even just the penis. She complains that other women value men-penises too highly.  In broad historical and evolutionary perspectives, her claim isn’t credible.

Creating public value for the penis equal to that of the vagina is probably beyond the power of poets. But reducing the vastly disproportionate imprisonment of men should be attempted.

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Notes:

[1] Dafydd ap Gwilym, Cywydd y Gal (Penis Poem), from Welsh trans. Clancy (2003) p. 192. The subsequent quote is from id. The Welsh text, an audio of a Welsh reading, an English translation, and additional information are available on the Swansea University’s excellent Dafydd ad Gwilym site (see entry 85 -Y Gal on the choose-poem dropdown box). Dafydd ap Gwilym wrote Cywydd y Gal probably in the period 1330-1350. Johnston (1991) p. 29.

[2] Trans. Muldoon (2009) p. 113. Muldoon’s translation is livelier than Clancy’s. Johnston claims in his preface to the poem that it is “in fact an elaborate means of boasting the poet’s sexual process.” Johnston (1991) p. 29. That perspective lacks appreciation for the legal context of the poem. Johnston’s introduction makes clear that he is a modern-day Suero de Quinones.

Other medieval Welsh poems disparage men’s genitals. Dafydd ab Edmwnd’s Dychan i Geuilliau Guto’r Glyn (Satire on Guto’r Glyn’s Testicles) describes Guto’r Glyn’s testicles as a “repulsive shaft … vile fulling-mill … a paunch of puss” and other descriptions of disease. Guto’r Glyn’s Dychan i Gal Dafydd ab Edmwnd (Satire on Dafydd ab Edmwnd’s Penis) responds by declaring that Dafydd ab Edmwnd has “a linden tree of a diseased prick.” Trans. Johnston (1991) pp. 127, 131.

[3] Gwerful Mechain, Cywydd y Cedor (Vagina Poem), from Welsh trans. Johnston (1991) p. 41. Here’s the full English translation of Cywydd y Cedor, as well as the Welsh text. Clancy (2003) p. 339 has “the place where children are bred.” That translation is less consistent with the wondrous, laudatory tone of Cywydd y Cedor. Cywydd y Gal and Cywydd y Cedor commonly occur together in medieval manuscripts, with both poems attributed to Gwerful Mechain. But there is strong textual and stylistic evidence that Dafydd ap Gwilym authored Cywydd y Gal.

[4] Id. trans. Clancy (2003) p. 339. Id. titles this poem Vivat Vagina and the previous poem, Reproach to his Penis.  The actual Welsh titles are symmetric and less descriptive. For clarity, I’ve replaced above the second line in id., “The feathered crutch’s flawless court,” with the corresponding verse translation from Johnston (1991) p. 43.

[5] Gwerful Mechain, I Wragedd Eiddigeddus (To Jealous Wives), from Welsh trans. Johnston (1991) pp. 37, 39. Johnston, underscoring the women-are-wonderful effect, laughably declares that the poem is “a subtle but clear proclamation of female sexuality.”

[image] Tide {detail}. Jan Dibbets, 1969. Gelatin silver prints. Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund, 2007. The Panza Collection (07.43). Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC. Douglas Galbi’s photograph at Hirschhorn Museum.

References:

Clancy, Joseph P., trans. 2003. Medieval Welsh poems. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

Johnston, Dafydd. 1991. Canu Maswedd yr Oesoedd canol = Medieval Welsh erotic poetry. Grangetown: Tafol.

Muldoon, Paul. 2009. Dafydd ap Gwilym. “Y Gal.” Irish Studies Review. 17(1): 111-113.

Candace & Alexander the Great: from cunning to inwardness

Candace taking Alexander into her chamber

Alexander the Great ventured toward the territory of Candace, Queen of Ethiopia and former ruler of Egypt. Queen Candace was “a woman of remarkable beauty, in her middle age.” She was wary of Alexander the Great. She wrote to him:

Do not despise us for the color of our skin. In our souls we are brighter than the whitest of your people. We have eighty flame-throwers ready to do harm to those who would attack us. [1]

To dissuade hostility from Alexander, Candace sent him a lavish array of gifts: 500 young Ethiopians, 100 solid-gold ingots, ivory, pearls, elephants, chimpanzees, and many other precious goods. With additional cunning, Candace sent one of her courtiers, a Greek painter, to infiltrate Alexander’s camp and secretly paint a portrait of him. The painter succeeded in his covert mission. He gave the portrait of Alexander to Candace.

Alexander, with his own cunning, infiltrated in disguise Candace’s palace. Candace alone saw through Alexander’s ruse. When they were together in private, she addressed him as Alexander. He insisted that he was Antigonus, Alexander’s messenger. But Candace showed him the portrait by which she recognized him to be Alexander. Alexander the Great trembled, knowing that he had been caught in the power of Candace. With wisdom she counseled him:

You who have destroyed the Persians and the Indians, who have taken trophies from the Medes and Parthians, who have subdued the whole East — now, without a single battle, you have become the prisoner of Candace. Know this then, Alexander, that no matter how clever a man may be, another will be able to outwit him. Now Candace’s cunning has outstripped even Alexander’s intelligence. [2]

Alexander was furious. Candace taunted him:

What can you do? You who were such a great king have now fallen into the hands of a single woman.

With the motherly address, “do not fret, child Alexander,” Candace promised to preserve Alexander’s disguise. When Candace’s men wanted to kill Alexander disguised as the messenger, she and the disguised Alexander together arranged to trick the men. After spending some time with Candace, Alexander moved on to other adventures.[3]

In France about the year 1300, the Mirror of Simple Souls adapted the story of Queen Candace and Alexander the Great. The middle-aged Queen Candace became a damsel, a king’s daughter. This damsel was “great-hearted and noble and worthy of heart.” But she wasn’t clever. She was status-seeking and self-centered:

this damsel heard tell of all the graciousness and nobility of King Alexander, and at once she wanted to love him for the great fame of his gentle breeding. [4]

His fame alone was sufficient for her. But there was a difficulty with this love:

this damsel was so far off from this great lord, on whom of her own will she had set her love, that she could neither see him nor possess him; and because of this she was often sad at heart, for no other love than this sufficed for her.

The damsel couldn’t have the man she wanted. So she created an image of the man:

she thought to herself that she would comfort her sorrowful heart by making some imagined likeness of her loved one, for love of whom her heart was many a time sorely wounded. So she had a picture painted to represent the likeness of the king whom she loved, as near as she could to the appearance under which she loved him, by the affection of the love by which she was overcome; and by means of this picture and of her other rites of love she could imagine that the king himself was present.

A teen-aged girl in love would understand this tale.[5] The story of Candace and Alexander became in the Mirror of Simple Souls an allegory for the simple soul’s simplicity and self-absorption.

Love by hearsay was a common motif in European courtly literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It had an influential source in Cicero’s De Amicitia:

there is nothing more lovable than virtue, nothing that more allures us to affection, since on account of their virtue and uprightness we feel a sort of affection even for those whom we have never seen. [6]

In Candace’s love by hearsay for Alexander, the Mirror of Simple Souls substitutes for virtue abstract ideas of nobility (“graciousness,” “gentle breeding”). Love by hearsay with this substitution becomes less connected to acts and more connected to being within the lover’s own imagination.

Stories of cunning have been more popular historically than stories of imaginative self-absorption. The story of Queen Candace and Alexander the Great in the Alexander romance evoked the cunning of Odysseus in Homer’s hugely influential epics. The trickster motif more generally is attested in popular tales throughout history and around the world. In medieval France, fabliaux recounted cunning across a wide range of circumstances. Boccacio’s Decameron with more literary sophistication celebrated similar character.

The Mirror of Simple Souls, in contrast, anticipated the imaginative self-absorption of early nineteenth-century Romantic poetry. The Mirror’s theological ideas are common. The Mirror doesn’t reveal any particular mystical experience.[7] With aggressive self-promotion, the Mirror achieved considerable distribution. Dozens of manuscripts of it were probably produced, with fourteenth-century translations into at least three languages.[8] What makes the Mirror of Simple Souls interesting is others’ interests in it.

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Notes:

[1] Greek Alexander Romance III.18, trans. Stoneman (1991) p. 136. Flame-throwers would blacken the skin of attackers in a deadly way. On Candace’s skin-color, see above illumination in a European manuscript. In the Bible, Acts 8:27 describes the Candace of the Ethiopians, where Candace means “queen.”

[2] Id. III.22, p. 140. The subsequent quote is from id.

[3] Alexander had a close relationship with his mother. Candace, however, did not always remain a mother figure to Alexander. Various medieval versions of the Alexander Romance adapted the relationship of Candace and Alexander in various ways. The ninth-century Byzantine chronicler George the Monk (George Hamartolus) had Alexander marry Candace in appreciation for her “cunning and devious intelligence.” Trans. Stoneman (2012) p. 30. In the twelfth century, Alexander of Paris (Alexander of Bernay) wrote a romance of Alexander in French verse. In that romance, Candace and Alexander spent half a day of pleasure together in bed. Then Alexander left. Thomas of Kent (Eustache Kent) in the twelfth century also wrote an Alexander romance, Roman de toute chevalerie. That version features a love affair between Candace and Alexander, but includes warnings in the tradition of the literature of men’s sexed protests. Roman de toute chevalerie was the basis for the thirteenth-century Middle English romance Kyng Alisaunder.

[4] Mirror of Simple Souls, Prologue, from Old French trans. Colledge, Marler & Grant (1999) p. 10. The subsequent two quotes are from id. pp. 10-11.

[5] Kocher (2008) struggles to find complex significance in this prologue:

the Prologue is, for all its complexity, a deceptively small and easily opened door into the vast edifice of the text. … It is a modest, somewhat cautious beginning to a text whose later wording is not so cautious. The Prologue makes no attempt to introduce features of the Mirror that are controversial or difficult to understand

Id. p. 90.

[6] Cicero, De Amicitia, 8.20, from Latin trans. Falconer (1923). On love by hearsay (amour lointain, amor de lohn, amour de loin), Jaeger (1999) pp. 122-7, Asaro (2013). Williom of Blois’s Alda, written in Latin about 1168, provides an earlier example of amour de loin:

Pyrrhus falls in love with what he’s heard;
he burns with blind passion, but he does not know
what he loves so insanely; he does not know
what he loves, for he loves the girl
for her reputation and not for herself.

ll. 165-9, trans. Elliott (1984) p. 110. According to the thirteenth-century vita of the troubadour Jaufré Rudel, he fell in love with the countess of Tripoli after hearing travelers’ reports of her.

[7] Kocher (2008) observes of the Mirror:

if the text is read aloud, listeners will hear most of its central ideas in virtually any thirty-minute period. … The major points appear over and over, in varying formulations and metaphors.

Id. p. 54

[8] The Mirror has survived in “at least sixteen complete or partial versions”; “it appears as if dozens of copies of the Mirror were bobbing up continually in the seas of late-medieval western Europe like unsinkable corks.” Kocher (2013) p. 25; Lerner (2010) p. 116. Dronke (1984), p. 202, called Marguerite Porete, to whom the Mirror has come to be attributed, “the most neglected of the great writers of the thirteenth century.” In the past three decades, many scholarly articles have addressed Marguerite’s work.

[image] Candace taking Alexander into her chamber. Illumination for Historia de proelis in a French translation (Le Livre et le vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre), France, c. 1420, Royal 20 B XX,  f 71v. Thanks to the British Library.

References:

Asaro, Brittany. 2013. “Unmasking the Truth about Amor de Lonh: Giovanni Boccaccio’s Rebellion against Literary Conventions in Decameron I.5 and IV.4.” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 44 (1): 95-120.

Colledge, Edmund, J. C. Marler and Judith Grant, ed. and trans. 1999. Margaret Porette {Marguerite Porete}. The mirror of simple souls. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press.

Dronke, Peter. 1984. Women writers of the Middle Ages: a critical study of texts from Perpetua († 203) to Marguerite Porete († 1310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Elliott, Alison Goddard. 1984. Seven medieval Latin comedies. New York: Garland.

Falconer, W.A. ed. and trans. 1923. Cicero. De amicitia (On Friendship). Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, vol. XX.

Jaeger, C. Stephen. 1999. Ennobling love: in search of a lost sensibility. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kocher, Suzanne. 2008. Allegories of love in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of simple souls. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.

Kocher, Zan. 2013. “The Apothecary’s Mirror of Simple Souls: Circulation and Reception of Marguerite Porete’s Book in Fifteenth-Century France.” Modern Philology. 111 (1): 23-47.

Lerner, Robert E. 2010. “New light on The Mirror of Simple Souls.” Speculum. 85 (1): 91-116.

Stoneman, Richard, trans. 1991. Pseudo-Callisthenes. The Greek Alexander romance. London, England: Penguin Books.

Stoneman, Richard, trans. 2012. Legends of Alexander the Great. London: I.B. Tauris.