This collection of essays focuses on the questions of women's access to a written culture and their representation in literature in late medieval Britain. It explores women's engagement with Anglo-Norman, English, Welsh and Latin, and addresses such issues as orality and literacy and women's exclusion from a written tradition. It considers the historical evidence for women's activity as writers, patrons and readers, and examines the representation of women within different literary genres--both secular and religious--their possession or lack of power, and their roles as lovers, mothers and saints.