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There is an amazing CD called 'Voices of Light'. Stupid name but great album. It's composed by Richard Einhorne. He was, apparently, so moved by watching Carl Dreyer's 'Passion of Jeanne d'Arc' that he went away to write the score for what I think is the most powerful silent film ever. Anyhow, he ended up with an amazing sequence using the letters of Joan fo Arc, writings of Hildegard von Bingen, amongst others. Ali ---- Original Message ---- From: Alison Croggon Date: Wed 10/31/01 12:09 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: the new TEXT - epic Yes - I enjoyed it too. Totally coincidentally, I've been reading about Christine de Pisan and other mediaeval women writers and mystics, and reflecting on the strong utopian and fantastic element in much female writing of the time - (Cites de Dames being one of them) - and also linking that with the fantasies of fashion, which was the cause of so many repressive sumptuary laws at the time, which were often subverted, eg when I think Venetian authorities issued an edict which ordered all married women to wear veils, it heralded the invention of the transparent silk veil, which immeasurably enhanced a woman's sexual mystique, and also decorative veils which hid a woman's identity, causing a little trouble for those who sought to control their activities. That is, that fantasies in fashion as well as intellectual fantasies were a major means of subversion for women in a society which had grown increasingly misogynist, and in which people like Philiope of Novare said "Teach women neither letters nor writing": so the collision of fantasy and fact seem fairly potent. The other thing which strikes me about this is that the interiority you note in the epic, the intrusion of the personal, must stem from the tradition of female mystic writing (eg the Netherlands mystics which influenced Meister Eckhardt, and Marguerite d'Oingt, Hildegard von Bingen, Machtild of Magdeburgh etc), which introduced a whole new vocabulary for mysticism which incorporated the body fully into mystical experience. Best Alison Alison Croggon Home page http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/ Masthead http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/