""WomanPrayer, WomanSong is a groundbreaking contribution to the church of our day. While drawing on scripture and affirming God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ, this exciting book addresses the urgent need for ritual which incorporates women's experience. Feminine biblical images of God are recovered; feminine pronouns for God are supplied; valiant women are remembered; the church year is reinterpreted to highlight women's experience; and oppression and violence against women in scripture and society are exposed. I have been searching for alternatives to hierarchical, coercive, male images of God which are at the same time faithful to the Christian revelation. I have found a rich resource here "" --Ruth Duck, Pastor, Professor of Worship, Garrett -Evangelical Theological Seminary ""With Miriam Therese Winter's WomanPrayer, WomanSong, the feminist movement in the Christian community goes beyond the critique of patriarchal bias in religion and begins a new phase. Through a new religious encounter with the Mother-spirit of God, a new religious culture begins to develop that also renews the liberating grace and power of biblical faith. For the first time the church prays and sings the ancient story of creation and redemption through women's creative imagination."" --Rosemary Ruether, author of Women-Church ""By drawing on tradition to challenge tradition, this book models how a feminist hermeneutic can revitalize tradition. The preface, liturgies, and songs reveal a sophisticated theological mind blessed with the gift of poetic expression."" --Thomas Troeger, Professor of Preaching and Parish Ministry and Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs, Iliff School of Theology Miriam Therese Winter, a Medical Mission Sister, is professor of liturgy, worship, spirituality, and feminist studies and director of the Women's Leadership Institute at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. She is author of award-winning books and songs, which include WomanWisdom, WomanWitness, and WomanWord, a trilogy of books on all the women of the Bible, and the recording Joy Is Like the Rain.

The number of surviving medieval secular poems attributed to named female authors is small, some of the best known being those of the trobairitz the female troubadours of southern France. However, there is a large body of poetry that constructs a particular textual femininity through the use of the female voice. Some of these poems are by men and a few by women (including the trobairitz); many are anonymous, and often the gender of the poet is unresolvable. A "woman's song" in this sense can be defined as a female-voice poem on the subject of love, typically characterized by simple language, sexual candor, and apparent artlessness. The chapters in Medieval Woman's Song bring together scholars in a range of disciplines to examine how both men and women contributed to this art form. Without eschewing consideration of authorship, the collection deliberately overturns the long-standing scholarly practice of treating as separate and distinct entities female-voice lyrics composed by men and those composed by women. What is at stake here is less the voice of women themselves than its cultural and generic construction.

This collection focuses on a woman's point of view in love poetry, and juxtaposes poems by women and poems about women to raise questions about how femininity is constructed. Although most medieval 'woman's songs' are either anonymous or male-authored lyrics in a popular style, the term can usefully be expanded to cover poetry composed by women, and poetry that is aristocratic or learned rather than popular. Poetry from ancient Greece and Rome that resonates with the medieval poems is also included here. Readers will find a range of voices, often echoing similar themes, as women rejoice or lament, praise or condemn, plead or curse, speak in jest or in earnest, to men and to each other, about love.

The number of surviving medieval secular poems attributed to named female authors is small, some of the best known being those of the trobairitz the female troubadours of southern France. However, there is a large body of poetry that constructs a particular textual femininity through the use of the female voice. Some of these poems are by men and a few by women (including the trobairitz); many are anonymous, and often the gender of the poet is unresolvable. A "woman's song" in this sense can be defined as a female-voice poem on the subject of love, typically characterized by simple language, sexual candor, and apparent artlessness. The chapters in Medieval Woman's Song bring together scholars in a range of disciplines to examine how both men and women contributed to this art form. Without eschewing consideration of authorship, the collection deliberately overturns the long-standing scholarly practice of treating as separate and distinct entities female-voice lyrics composed by men and those composed by women. What is at stake here is less the voice of women themselves than its cultural and generic construction.

Writing with the directness of the reggae lyric, Goulbourne articulates the griefs, hopes and unquenchable spirit of black women. 'Woman Song' reveals a constant faith in woman's creativity, both in their everyday lives and in artistic expression.

Reinmar der Alte, the twelfth-century poet also known as Reinmar von Hagenau, wrote a considerable number of 'Frauenlieder' and 'Frauenstrophen', i.e. poems and stanzas in which the speaker is a woman. However, there has never been a satisfactory scholarly treatment of these poems. Throughout the history of scholarship dealing with his works, the evaluation has been based mainly on a characterization of his personality. This volume tries to fill this gap by presenting and analysing the Woman's Song of Reinmar.