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A Writer's Retreat

~ Author Candace Robb chatting about York, medieval history, and the writing life.

A Writer's Retreat

Tag Archives: Susan Signe Morrison

March is Women’s History Month!

06 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by Candace Robb in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

A Medieval Woman's Companion, A Poisoned Past, Defending the City of God, Elena Woodacre, Inventing Eleanor, Julie A Chappell, Medieval Women's Choir, Michael Evans, Perilous Passages, Queenship in the Mediterranean, Sharan Newman, Steven Bednarski, Susan Signe Morrison, Tanya Stabler Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris, Women's History Month

Last night, sublime music, women’s voices soaring in a Medieval Women’s Choir concert at Trinity Church. I was transfixed, transported by the voices. During the instrumentals I closed my eyes and watched all my beloved characters dancing to the vielle and harp. Members of the Medieval Women’s Choir will perform at my book launch on 4 May at the University Bookstore in Seattle!

***

When I began my career in crime writing, my library from graduate school was light on women. I scrambled for information about women in the 14th century, sifting through mountains of books, documents and papers hungrily copying down the smallest of gleanings about women and their lives in the period. But as you know if you keep up with the field or if you’ve followed this blog, that has changed. Radically. Historians are writing brilliant books about women in the middle ages. Hurrah!

unnamed-1Where to begin?! If you’re just starting, I can’t think of a better introduction and overview than Susan Signe Morrison’s new book, A Medieval Woman’s Companion (Oxbow Books 2016). A few weeks ago, as a guest on this blog, Susan treated us all to a lively discussion about how we might make use of her new book in writing novels about medieval women. So you’ve already sampled Susan’s engaging style and the range of women she discusses.

Not only does Susan introduce the reader to a grand assortment of women from a wide variety of backgrounds, but she discusses the broader themes touching on women’s lives at the time—attitudes about women’s bodies; women’s occupations; religious movements; women in the arts, including playwrights and troubadours and Japanese writers. Each chapter includes a resource guide for further exploring the women and the topics. The resources include websites, videos, novels, as well as source documents.

Who can resist a book with chapter titles such as: “Textile Concerns: Holy Transvestites and the Dangers of Cross-dressing”? The chapter isn’t solely about cross-dressing, though that isn’t just a come on. Susan discusses the political implications of clothing including the sumptuary laws, how water-powered mills for grinding grain freed women to work in textiles—and all facets of that production, and, yes, the women who dressed as men to protect themselves or to protect their cities and kingdoms—women donning armor!

One of my favorite parts of the book is the final chapter, “Looking Forward” Contemporary Feminist Theory and Medieval Women.” Susan states at the beginning: “Medieval women’s lives and writings prefigure many issues that have arisen in more recent times. Indeed, the medieval period helped form current beliefs and attitudes toward women.” In this chapter Susan cites a wide assortment of writers on the importance of revising what we consider the “canon”, that is, the works considered worthy of study in schools and universities, as well as the necessity of questioning attitudes we’ve carried forward through the ages—women’s work is unimportant, women’s innocence is best protected by ignorance, how women have been considered the Other. The chapter is thought-provoking and engaging, not angry. If you are using this book for a class, this is the chapter I’d imagine inspiring the liveliest discussions with support from the earlier chapters.

As if all this weren’t enough, Susan has created a companion website for the book that will be continually updated—in fact, she’s already adding material.

If you’re writing about medieval women or teaching medieval history or literature, this book is an essential. What a resource!

Once you’ve begun, look back at the non-fiction I’ve featured on this blog:15228
A Poisoned Past by Steven Bednarski
Perilous Passages: the Book of Margery Kempe by Julie A Chappell
Inventing Eleanor by Michael Evans
The Beguines of Medieval Paris by Tanya Stabler Miller
Defending the City of God by Sharan Newman
Queenship in the Mediterranean by Elena Woodacre (be sure to look at part 2 as well)

My graduate school reading that was so light on women—that is happily a thing of the past.

 

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“A Medieval Woman’s Companion” as Inspiration for Novelists

14 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by Candace Robb in Medieval Culture, Writing Women's Lives

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

A Medieval Woman's Companion, Aethelthryth, Alice Perrers, Anna Komnene, Christina of Markyate, Christine de Pizan, Donna Jo Napoli, Edith, Emma of Normandy, Felicie de Almania, Freydis, Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd Wife, Hild, Hildegard von Bingen, Hrotsvit von Gandersheim, Joan of Kent, Katla, Marasaki Shikibu, Margaret of Beverley, Margery Kempe, Marguerite de Porete, Marie de France, medieval women, Melkorka, Na Prous Boneta, Nicola Griffith, Patricia Bracewell, Rebecca Barnhouse, Robert Glück, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Margaret of Scotland, Susan Signe Morrison, Thorgunna, Trota of Salerno

It is my great pleasure to welcome Susan Signe Morrison to A Writers Retreat. Her new book, A Medieval Woman’s Companion: Women’s Lives in the European Middle Ages, just out from Oxbow Books, is a snappy, engaging exploration of remarkable individuals as well as themes in women’s studies, grounded on solid research and yet also providing links to popular art based on the historical record. You’re in for a treat! Feel free to ask questions or add your own thoughts. I’ll pass them on to Susan.

Candace Robb asked me to explore how writers of historical novels might use the unnamed-1material in my new book, A Medieval Woman’s Companion: Women’s Lives in the European Middle Ages, to spark ideas for creating fictional worlds featuring these women or women like them. While I dare not mention all the ideas my fertile brain can conjure up—I do need to keep some in my literary mental cupboard for future works I might pen!—I can think of many ways these lives and the information the book provides can lead to natural ways of crafting and imagining worlds in the medieval past. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Heloise d’Argenteuil, Hildegard von Bingen, and Joan of Arc have been richly appropriated in literature and film. They are not the only women of the Middle Ages worthy of attention.

Viking women start off the book and their stories as presented in Icelandic sagas need no augmentation to make them exciting. However, some of their lives deserve more focus, as seen in Donna Jo Napoli’s Hush: An Irish Princess’ Tale (NY: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2007) which tells the story of the teenager Melkorka, daughter of the Irish king, when she was kidnapped and enslaved by Vikings. Melkorka’s father ultimately offers the throne to her son. While the Laxdaela Saga dealt with her later life, this Young Adult book explores her teenage years in a gripping and poignant adventure. Unn the Deep-Minded, one of the original claimants to land when Iceland was colonized, fascinates me. Older with grown-up children, she manipulates her death to make sure her beloved grandson inherits her wealth. Her ship burial is an elaborate affair, attesting to her importance. What about her earlier life? What made her so strong and willing to embark to a strange, new land? She reminds me of those pioneer women of the American West, who defied the odds to settle in a bleak environment. Given recent discussions in the media about the erasure of older women from film, Unn would be a dramatic character in a fictional telling of this dynamic woman’s life. The original crone of power and determination, Unn surely deserves her own book.

The witches who make an appearance in the Icelandic sagas also tantalize, from the cleverly deceptive Katla to Thorgunna, who shows up naked, calmly cooking dinner, after she has died. Surely the violent Freydis deserves her own tale. When no man is willing to kill innocent women in her attempt to gain money and power, she speaks: “Hand me an axe.” After her massacre, she is “highly pleased with what she had accomplished.” Cold? Calculating? Yes. But fascinating.

Saxon women always seem so boldy Germanic. Queen Aethelthryth had two chaste marriages. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, “To have one chaste marriage may be regarded as good fortune. To have two chaste marriages looks like calculation.” Aethelthryth must have been one strong character to have managed unions with powerful men who abided by her decision. What was her story beyond what we find in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and saints’ lives?

shadowThe Anglo-Norman ruling women of the 11th and early 12th centuries demand attention, as we have seen lately in Pat Bracewell’s series on Emma of Normandy. What about poor Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor? I’ve always felt sorry for her, childless, sent to a nunnery for a year after her marriage of six years. Was she resentful of her bullying (as I imagine him) father, Earl Godwin of Wessex? What about the devout Saint Margaret of Scotland? She became mother to three Scottish kings, founded hospices, and established a ferry for pilgrims still named after her: Queensferry. We often mistake piety for softness or weakness, a passive devotion, rather than recognizing such spirituality as it would have been perceived in the Middle Ages: the intense strength of steadfastness.

The life of the twelfth-century Christina of Markyate hardly needs elaboration from a modern novelist. Abused physically and emotionally by her parents, she must hide for four years in a devout monk’s closet, let out only at night to relieve her physical needs. Yet I imagine more remains to be done with her. A middle-grade chapter book might explore that early part of her life, when she suffers so much from her parents’ schemes before she succeeds in becoming a respected nun. Other books for younger readers suggest themselves as well: what about the life of Saint Catherine of Siena before she became famous? Or a picture book of the young Hildegard von Bingen living in a cell with the holy Jutta? Hild, a seventh-century abbess and patron of the first known poet in the English language (Caedmon), has her own novel now, Nicola Griffith’s novel Hild (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2013), which traces Hild’s life from her girlhood and explores her impact on the Anglo-Saxon world. What about a book featuring a transvestite saint? Surely a girl could identify with a trouser-wearing non-conformist defying her parents!

Fictive lives penned by real medieval women writers might also be promising 9781785350092sources. Think of all the women Christine de Pizan cites in her opus The Book of the City of Ladies, in which she constructs an allegorical city populated by women from history and myth and reigned over by none other than the Virgin Mary herself. The young virgin martyrs and holy harlots in Hrotsvit von Gandersheim’s plays deserve further scrutiny. After all, the tenth-century Hrotsvit was the first playwright-male or female–since the Classical period. Surely she warrants some attention. Medieval imaginary works give rise to new literature today. My own recent historical fiction, Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife, tells the story of the Old English epic Beowulf from the point of view of the women. What about those suffering wives in Marie de France’s short romances called lais? Maybe a novel telling the story of the werewolf’s wife in Bisclavret whose nose gets bitten off warrants her own tale.

Trota of Salerno, of whom we know almost nothing, would be an ideal protagonist. Since material about her actual life is so scanty, the novelist can freely concoct a backstory. Trota must have had fascinating encounters with patients and medical personnel. What caused her to write the manuscripts ascribed to her? Did she have to defy authorities or was Salerno utterly unique in supporting women’s medical activity? Speaking of healing, what about Felicie de Almania, put on trial for acting as a physician in the 14th century? MarHer defiant testimony suggests an intelligent force of nature. Legal cases such as hers naturally lend themselves to fiction, as in the tragic stories of various heretics, such as Marguerite de Porete and Na Prous Boneta. Testimony still exists, off of which one could build a realistic and compelling narrative.

revised Triple Knot_cvrOne might consider unexpected approaches to these medieval women. Think about Margery Kempe by Robert Glück, in which the fifteenth-century pilgrim and visionary’s audacious life is paralleled with the narrator’s passionate love for a young man. Rebecca Barnhouse’s YA The Book of the Maidservant tells Margery’s story from the point of view of her serving girl. That’s a classic approach, of course: make up a character who has encounters with a famous figure, allowing us to see that renowned person “slant,” as it were. What about Margery’s story from the perspective of her confessor or her beleaguered and, considering what he endures, tolerant husband, John? Candace Robb has written numerous dazzling novels set in fourteenth-century England. Focusing on the women—fictional and historical—who influenced events and experienced love and betrayal, these books bring to life the lives of medieval women, such as the “Fair Maid of Kent” in A Triple Knot (Broadway Books 2014) and Alice Perrers, who really was The King’s Mistress (Broadway Books 2011).

Don’t be limited to the European Middle Ages. Anna Komnene, that Byzantine powerhouse, has often been called the first female secular historian. She had issues with her brother, who sneaks in to take the imperial ring of power off their dead father’s finger while Anna remains in mourning. He steals the throne from Anna before exiling her — his own sister! Margaret of Beverley’s story—born in Jerusalem to English pilgrim parents, returning only to be caught in a siege by Saladin’s forces—is more timely than ever, when the Middle East hits the headlines daily. Don’t forget those medieval women of Japan. We have many of their writings to guide us in the form of “pillow books” and the groundbreaking The Tale of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. What if a Japanese woman visited Europe or visa-versa?

Muslim and Jewish women intermingled with Christians in Spain. I can see a vibrant epic following three friends of differing faiths torn asunder by religion and rival love affairs. Wait–I have to go write it down–right now!

* * *

In addition to short (5-7 pages) biographies of twenty medieval women, chapters also include an introduction discussing ways to approach the historical past using primary documents; a brief history of the English language and the role women played in its development; an analysis of the concepts forming medical theories about women’s bodies; and a journey into clothing and cross-dressing. The final chapter uses contemporary feminist theory to show how medieval women’s lives can be analyzed using such approaches and, in fact, deepen and augment current theoretical views, complicating gender theory. All of this information—and the works cited that I used as sources—can lead the 21st century writer through many a literary labyrinth, ending up with a writing project.

Some Links:
Margaret of Beverley
Celebrate Scotland/ St Margaret of Scotland
Grendel’s Mother
A Medieval Woman’s Companion
Oxbow Books

******

Thank you, Susan! This book has already inspired a subplot in Kate Clifford #2!

Shop Talk with Susan Signe Morrison about Grendel’s Mother (2 of 2)

04 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by Candace Robb in Guest Post, Shop Talk, Writing Women's Lives

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Anglo-Saxon poetry, Bald's Leechbook, Beowulf, Brimhild, Grendel, Grendel's Mother, Heorot, JRR Tolkien, Norse mythology, Old English, Susan Signe Morrison

And now, without further ado, talking shop with Susan Signe Morrison, whose novel Grendel’s Mother: the Saga of the Wyrd-Wife is just out from Top Hat Books!

Q:  In Grendel’s Mother you use a spare style, no psychological explorations, no in depth descriptions of clothing, customs, explanations of the culture as one often finds in historical fiction. Is this style book-specific, to echo the language of Beowulf, or might you use it again?

A:  When I began writing the novel, I want to echo the language of Anglo-Saxon 9781785350092literature. In terms of word-stock, this meant using a lot of Germanic words. More key, I felt, was the style. How could I replicate– but also update for a contemporary, novel-reading audience–the feeling of Old English conventions? Almost unconsciously, I layered the texture of the writing with many appositions–noun and verbal phrases that function like synonyms. For example, rather than just saying, “the fierce warrior,” a more Anglo-Saxon thing to do would be to write, “the fierce warrior, weapon wielder, war-like wreaker.” I tell my students that this poetic device increases the density and weight of such verse. A Picasso portrait might have three eyes for an individual in order to show how that person looks from all sides. It creates a 3-D effect. I think the Anglo-Saxon habit of doing this in writing does an analogous thing: conjuring up a multi-dimensional world. I ended up loving this spare style and might indeed return to it in the future. I hadn’t thought about a sequel until an Amazon reader’s review: “It would make a great mini-series. (And there’s room for a sequel.)” I’d certainly be up a mini-series. 🙂 So now I’m thinking: what should/would a sequel entail? I’m pondering poetic possibilities (to put it alliteratively).

Q: Chapter 3, Gobban’s God, is a delight to read, the priest’s awkward attempts to explain his Christian beliefs, the amusing puzzlement of Brimhild and her parents, her mother’s attempts to politely relate the wildest ideas to their own Norse gods. The Scylding beliefs sound like a far more pragmatic system. I wondered as I read whether this hilarious discussion evolved from classroom discussions. Did it? Am I right in guessing that this chapter was great fun to write?

A:  Thanks for seeing the humor here! The book on the whole is quite serious, so it’s important to spice it up occasionally with rough comic moments. Your asking this question makes me think: yes, it does stem from some classroom discussions. I remember distinctly a particular incident. A student was presenting an oral report on a song by Hildegard von Bingen, that great, multi-talented twelfth-century doctor, visionary, healer, theologian and musician. The student said, “I don’t believe in God, but if I did, I wouldn’t believe in three gods like Hildegard!” I furiously thought, “What is she talking about? There aren’t three gods in that song!” And then I realized: the student had never heard of the Trinity before, a key concept of Christian thought. Ever afterwards, I never assume prior knowledge about any religious reference in medieval literature that students encounter. This certainly influenced the scene with Gobban. I tried to imagine: why would anyone convert? Why would you change your religion if you had a perfectly fine mythology and panoply of gods? How would you understand your first encounter with Christianity if you were a pagan (a loaded term!)? Not only that, but Germanic peoples were not naturally given to “turning the other cheek.”   Sæwald is highly skeptical about Gobban’s awkward description of Christianity, but the young Brimhild is haunted by the thought of a little god born in a manger.

Q:  Did you find it difficult to stay within the known structure? Any temptation to change someone’s fate? Perhaps someone you grew fond of? Or to change it for the sake of a good story?

Fyrkat_hus_stor

A reconstructed Viking Age longhouse. (Fyrkat_hus_stor)

A:  Actually, having the confines of the known story of Beowulf was the most helpful thing of all in my act of writing. The boundaries of the narrative forced me to build the world of Grendel’s Mother within the walls of the hall of the Beowulf poem, so to speak. I chose to lurk in the obscure corners of that edifice, much like Grendel and his mother. Beowulf includes a lot of flash-forwards and flash-backs, what are sometimes called the “digressions.” These moments briefly and tantalizingly suggest violent and tragic events taking place, as it were, offstage. That’s where I went. I did change people’s fates. After all, Grendel’s Mother–my Brimhild–is not killed by Beowulf. Nor is Grendel’s fate exactly like the one as portrayed in the original poem. And making Grendel and his mother human definitely deviates from most readings of Beowulf. I believe the poem allows, even invites, alternative readings of history, mythology and story. After all, in lines 874 and following of the Old English original, the scop or minstrel tells the story of Sigemund and the dragon. There were many differing versions of this lore at the time the Beowulf poet wrote, so I feel doing my own take on a legend is even invited by the story itself. I did feel bad, though, about Freawaru’s and Inga’s fates, which were necessary to bring home the bloody fate doomed by the culture.

Q:  Some of the characters in the book do not appear in the poem, and all are more fully developed. I imagine the additional details and insight come from your research—other poetry/folk tales/history of the period, and some from your own imagination, building on that background. Could you talk about your process?

A:  I’ve taught Anglo-Saxon poetry, culture, and language for over twenty years. So I am pretty familiar with the Old English corpus of poetry and prose. Naturally this exposure, over time, bled into my writing process, even though I hadn’t originally read these works in order to include them in my novel. Once I began writing, I still had to do a lot of research. For example, how would have an Anglo-Saxon hall looked? I was toggling back and forth between research about Anglo-Saxon culture and what continental Danish culture was like from about the 4th to 6th centuries. I took the liberty of applying Anglo-Saxon traits–which date from later than the setting of the book–to the situation in Denmark around the year 400 C.E. I would interlace these discoveries into my narrative.

Q:  What was your inspiration for how Brimhild comes to Hildilid and Saewald? [You might have answered it in one of the other questions.]

A:  My inspiration definitely lies in the opening lines of Beowulf itself when the reader/listener hears about Scyld Scefing, who arrives among the Danes according to the floating founding legend. Scyld is the great-grandfather of Hrothgar, who is a central figure in the Old English poem and in my novel. As a feminist, I was interested in imagining what would happen if a girl child had arrived in a basket, much as Scyld had arrived. What would be the consequences? That’s where my novel begins.

Q:  Telling the story from the perspective of the women, you are able to explore the grim underside of the lives of “heroes.” It affords the opportunity for observations such as Freawaru’s when the queen tells her that the beheadings are “man’s business.” Freawaru thinks, “Surely…this is woman’s business, too. We are the ones married off as peaceweaving brides after the blood and gore have barely dried.” Was this the driving urge behind your writing it from this perspective, for a reality check?

A:  Absolutely. Two moments in Beowulf continue to haunt me. The first is the Fight at Finnsburg. The scop sings about Hildeburh, a Dane who marries into a Frisian family as part of a peace-weaving marriage between her clan and that of King Finn. However, as inevitably happens in Anglo-Saxon tales, that attempt at harmony falls apart violently. Not only do Hildeburh’s uncle and son die, but ultimately her husband as well. She is sent back to her own people, bereft of her marriage family and resentful of her blood kin. Another woman’s fate we learn at the end of Beowulf. This nameless woman laments about the fate of Beowulf’s people after his death; they are doomed to death or slavery. I wanted to explore what this culture was like for the women, compelled to participate in peace-weaving marriages doomed to failure and oppressed as victims of rape and bondage.

Q:  If you were using Grendel’s Mother in a Beowulf seminar, would you have students read it first, then the poem, or visa versa?

A:  Either way would work, depending on what you want to emphasize. Currently I picture-4am teaching a seminar called “Beowulf’s Literary Hoard: Contexts, Interlace, Allusion, Influence, and Intertexuality.” In it, we begin with an introduction to Old English and start doing basic translation. We read a number of shorter Old English poems in translation because I believe it’s best to come to Beowulf knowing some of the images and conventions that can be found in all sorts of Anglo-Saxon material, from elegies like The Wanderer and The Seafarer, to saints’ legends like Juliana with its totally kick-ass heroine. Next we read three different translations of Beowulf. One is by Seamus Heaney, the Irish Nobel-laureate. It works as an thrilling adventure and beautiful poem. We also will use Roy Liuzza’s facing-page translation so we can see what the Old English is for specific lines. And now Christopher Tolkien has just had published J. R.R. Tolkien’s own translation! This is incredibly exciting, given that Tolkien basically transformed the state of Anglo-Saxon studies in the 20the century. He drew on Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Germanic material for his own work. After reading Beowulf, we will read works inspired by that iconic poem, including Tolkien’s own Sellic Spell and The Lay of Beowulf and John Gardner’s Grendel. We’ll conclude with my own Grendel’s Mother. Then students will write their own creative responses to this amazing material. Many high schools teach Beowulf alongside Gardner’s Grendel, which has the perfect “emo” and angst-ridden protagonist that resonates with teenage boys. I hope teachers will include Grendel’s Mother to give the female point of view of girls and women in that culture, so that teenage girls find characters with whom they can identify or from whom they find inspiration.

Q:  There are a number of short poems/lyrics in the novel. Are all of them gleaned from manuscripts, or did you compose some of them?

A:  I composed them all, except for those indicated under Sources for Quotes (section epigrams and medical charms). I was inspired by some medieval short lyrics called Frauenlieder (women’s songs). There are a few in Old English: Wulf and Eadwacer is a very short poem voiced by a woman about fraught and erotic encounters with two males. The Wife’s Lament is uttered by a betrayed woman trapped under an oak tree. These compact verses affected my lyric composition. Originally I wrote them when I had a number of fantastic MFA poetry students in my Anglo-Saxon seminar whose own work became heavily affected by the verse we read. In turn, I found myself spontaneously writing short poems. Only later in my revision process did I integrate them into the prose of Grendel’s Mother. Fortunately, they expressed emotional states that would have taken many pages of prose to convey.

Q.  In your Note to the Reader you list the sources for the medical recipes, procedures, and charms, and warn readers “Do not try these recipes at home!” Hah! You add that you amended some. Could you give some examples?

ht_1000_year_recipe_tl_150401_16x9_992A.  That would be telling! Actually, a lot of these recipes can be found in Bald’s Leechbook–one of the best names of a work ever. I believe I would leave out an ingredient or two just so someone could not replicate such a recipe. Some recipes seem, from our modern perspective, “crazy.” For example, it is suggested that a woman who bleeds too much should find a horse “turd” and put it on a fire; she should stand over it to be fumigated by the smoke. I always wondered how someone would avoid being burned! So I wouldn’t try that at home. But other recipes and folk remedies may have been efficacious, and not just as placebo effects. After all, a tea made of willow bark is said to cure headaches–aspirin is synthesized from elements occurring in the willow plant. Many recipes involve chanting charms. Music therapy is said to be curative; the charms and their rhythms might have had a healing effect.

Q:  Also in you Note you remark that you have “set the story about one century earlier than the usual dating of the action [6th century] for dramatic purposes.” Could you elaborate?

A:  Spoiler alert!
I don’t want to give everything away, but I wanted the final scene to involve Hengest. The 8th-century monk Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People writes that Hengest and his brother Horsa were the original Angle chieftains to invade Briton in the middle of the 5th century. So that meant moving the (supposed) action of Beowulf back a century. It’s fiction, after all, not history.

This was such fun. Let’s do it again soon, Susan!

You can follow Susan on her website: grendelsmotherthenovel.com
which includes a blog: http://grendelsmotherthenovel.com/category/blog/
And Susan’s on Twitter: @medievalwomen

Susan Signe Morrison’s novel Grendel’s Mother: the Saga of the Wyrd-Wife (1 of 2)

03 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by Candace Robb in Guest Post, Shop Talk, Writing Women's Lives

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Anglo-Saxon poetry, Beowulf, Grendel, Grendel's Mother, Saga of the Wyrd-Wife, Susan Signe Morrison

9781785350092This past winter I had the pleasure of reading the manuscript of Susan Signe Morrison’s novel Grendel’s Mother: the Saga of the Wyrd-Wife. Here’s what I wrote after a few days of walking around with this wonderful book in my head:

In Grendel’s Mother: the Saga of the Wyrd-Wife, an emotionally rich retelling of Beowulf, Susan Signe Morrison reveals the tragically human monsters obscured by the heroic bravado of the original poem. Only a scholar and poet steeped in Anglo-Saxon literature and culture could conceive of such a lyrical extension of the poem from the perspective of the women in the mead hall. Reading it opened the poem to me as never before. What a gift! Grendel’s Mother is sure to become an integral part of every class on Beowulf.

Who is Susan? Though I made a point of having lunch with Susan at the medieval Women_pilgrims-210-expcongress at WMU this past spring and now count her as a friend, I’m going to feed you the great bio that appears on the book:

Professor of English at Texas State University, Susan Signe Morrison lives in Austin, Texas, and writes on topics lurking in the margins of history, ranging from recently uncovered diaries of a teenaged girl in World War II to medieval women pilgrims, excrement in the Middle Ages, and waste.

In a praise-filled review, Kirkus calls the book an “enchanting, poignant reimagining of Beowulf,” the review also says:

….Morrison writes in alliterative, lyric prose that evokes the Old English of her source text: ‘There she saw the soft seaweed, barnacled bed, of a marine monster. Leaving her work, approaching with caution, she listened for linnets along the lime lane.’ An incredible world is spun out of blunt, staccato words: a world of customs and objects, of heroes and faiths, and, of course, of monsters. Morrison manages to update the medieval morality of the original poem while preserving its mournful sense of the old ways passing away.

And the blogger Andy Lloyd (Andy Lloyd Book Reviews) says:

[A] gritty, no-holds-barred epic….[A]n English Prof. doing ‘Conan the Barbarian.’

Conan the Barbarian. Hah! As Susan says, “never in my wildest dreams…” I can just see her grinning ear to ear.

So of course I invited Susan to talk shop here on A Writer’s Retreat. Tomorrow you can read it here!

You can follow Susan on her website: grendelsmotherthenovel.com
which includes a blog: http://grendelsmotherthenovel.com/category/blog/
And Susan’s on Twitter: @medievalwomen

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