Dhuoda

This, to me, is one of the most heartbreaking texts to survive from the Middle Ages. Handbook for William is the only text to survive from the Carolingian period that we know to have been written by a woman. Dhuoda, a noblewoman separated from her husband and much loved children, wrote this little guide for her son to instruct him in righteous living. It is not a narrative; that, combined with Dhuoda's love of acrostics and numerology can make her text a little opaque for the modern reader. Yet the Handbook gives us access to the unhindered voice of a ninth-century woman: her hopes and fears for her family, her understanding of the society in which she lived, her deep faith, and her participation in literary culture. The context which Carol Neel provides in the introduction is what makes this all the more touching—Dhuoda was likely never reunited with her children, and the eponymous William was executed in his early twenties.… (meer)