This session offers an introduction to the women writers of the middle ages and the female voices of the past who are frequently ignored and overlooked. We will look at the work of women writers who considered both women’s place in society and women’s place in literature in the time before feminism had a name or a political identity, and consider how some of the questions of identity, self-expression and freedom were negotiated in a society that was both so different from ours while still grappling with the same questions.