anding that the relationship between a text and its reader does not exist in a vacuum but within the larger context of the cultural, social and ideological frameworks of the time in which the book and reader exist.
Other than the well documented misogynist portrayals of women that flourished during the medieval period, Bartlett contends that there were devotional texts that allowed women to form an identity and internalize roles that were counter to the overwhelming misogyny of the time. While it is true that the purpose of most of the texts of the time was to stir up devout religious fervor in female readers, devotional texts did exist that allowed women to form distinct roles and values because they included other discourses that women could draw a less-limited identity from. For example, the courtly romances in the devotional texts encompassed the ideology of female courtesy, an ideology wherein the female was the romantic heroine of the knightly lover, a convention that Bartlett (3) feels offered women a “validation (albeit an ambivalent one) of female power, agency, and beauty.” Matters of God and court were joined in these texts.
There are two other bodies of literature of the period which Bartlett contends encompassed ideologies that also allowed for women to draw a larger identity and role for themselves than misogynist medieval devotional texts. One group of these were the monastic epistles which allowed women to play the role of spiritual friend. Friendship was a broader category in these texts than it is traditionally
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