Writings Of Agnes Of Harcourt: The Life of Isabelle of France and the Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp (Notre Dame Texts in Medieval Culture) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0268044031 ISBN 13: 9780268044039

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003

Synopsis

Agnes of Harcourt is an important though little known thirteenth-century author. Born into a leading Norman noble family, she became an abbess at the new royal Franciscan abbey of Longchamp, founded just outside of Paris by Isabelle of France, sister of Louis IX. In the 1280s Agnes wrote a substantial biography of Isabelle of France, as well as a brief letter detailing Louis IX’s involvement with the abbey. These texts were based on Agnes’s first-hand observations and contained many lively stories about their royal subjects.

Agnes’s writings provide a fascinating window on religious life at the court of St. Louis and on the lives of some of the most interesting and powerful men and women of the day. More significantly, they preserve one of the very few female perspectives we have for this period, and, in The Life of Isabelle, offer what is probably the first biography of one woman by another in French.

Based on new research into the surviving archives of Longchamp, The Writing of Agnes of Harcourt presents the first English translation of her texts, and the first substantial introduction to her life and work. This critical edition includes both the old French and English versions of the text.

About this title

About the Author

Sean L. Field is assistant professor of history at the University of Vermont.

From the Back Cover

"Sean Field's book makes an original contribution. It is clearly written and readily accessible. The scholarship is outstanding in every respect. Field has complete mastery of the secondary and relevant primary sources." --William Chester Jordan, Princeton University

From the Inside Flap

"Isabelle of France was the sister of King Louis IX (Saint Louis) and the founder of Longchamp abbey near Paris. The third abbess, Agnes of Harcourt, wrote a Life of Isabelle which has hitherto been virtually unknown, as well as a Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp which has never before appeared in print. In this pioneering book Sean Field provides reliable texts and translations of the Life and the Letter. In his lucid introduction Field establishes the circumstances under which Agnes wrote. He demonstrates that the Life is, to the best of our knowledge, 'the first life of a woman by a contemporary woman written in the languages of France,' and moreover that Agnes of Harcourt is 'the first woman to have written an extant work of French prose.' This important publication will be of interest to historians of France and of religion, to literary scholars, and to anyone concerned with the lives of women in medieval France." --William D. Paden, Northwestern University

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0268044031
• ISBN 13: 9780268044039
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 120