Female authorship and authority in late medieval and early modern vernacular sermons from the Low Countries.

The project aims to investigate female authorship and authority within the complete genre of Dutch 'father confessor sermons' of the 1 5th and 16th centuries. This typically clerical (and therefore male) genre has almost exclusively been handed down by sister scribes. Recent research has shown that these women made substantial creative contributions to the written sermons. Therefore they are exceptionally important for a better understanding of female authorship and female religious authority, often linked to it.The main research questions are: what is the contribution of the sisters to the textualization of sermons? To what extent were they able to leave their own mark on these texts and derive religious authority from their writings? Is there any divergence between convents and is there continuity or change in the course of time as a result of religious and other evolutions?

Keywords:EARLY MODERN TIMES, MEDIEVAL LITERATURE, LOW COUNTRIES

Disciplines:History, Language studies, Literary studies