SOURCE: “Ælfric's Women Saints: Eugenia,” in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, edited by Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, Indiana University Press, 1990, pp. 146-57.

In the following essay, Szarmach analyzes Ælfric's treatment of sexuality and transvestism in his Life of Eugenia.

In the last few years three major books in Old English studies have looked at women and the literary image of women in Anglo-Saxon England, while at the same time several articles and conference papers have also sought to bring new perspectives to bear on similar themes.¹ Yet this new movement continues this century's characteristic disregard of Old English prose—not to mention its major figure, Ælfric—and at best downplays the vast corpus of prose and its potential contribution to the field. With this paper I begin a study of women saints in Ælfric's Lives of the Saints, offering a reading of Ælfric's...