SOURCE: Suydam, Mary. “‘Ever in Unrest’: Translating Hadewijch of Antwerp’s Mengeldichten.” Women’s Studies 28 (1999): 157-84.

In the following essay, Suydam considers the problems inherent in translating medieval texts and contends that it is a mistake to assume that Hadewijch’s use of gendered pronouns was based on the gender of the noun referent.

In recent years scholars addressing religious works written by women in the medieval period have become increasingly attuned to the interconnections between gender and power. This focus is partially attributable to the growth of feminist scholarship and partially to post-structuralist theories. Feminist scholarship has called attention to the complex problems involved in recovering, reconstructing, and interpreting works by female authors.¹ Post-structuralists have changed the ways we think about writing, texts, and reading.² Structuralists argued that the relationship between sign (a word such as “prayer”) and thing signified (object, idea or action, such as the...