Creative Project

 Dhuoda's Fake Diary

For my creative project, I created a fake diary from the perspective of one of the first female writers, or at least one 

of the first ones that we know about. Her name was Dhuoda (or sometimes Duoda) and she lived during the 9th century in Septimania, modern-day France. She was separated from both of her children for their safety because she lived in a time of relative social and political instability. Her eldest son, William, was held essentially hostage at the court of Charles the Bald, a grandson of Charlemagne, to ensure the family's loyalty, and her youngest was taken away to another part of France for his safety. 

Dhuoda really only wrote one thing, and that is her Liber Manualis, sometimes also called "Handbook for William" as the literal translation from Latin is just "handbook". This was basically a concentration of all of her values and ideas, essentially an instructional handbook for how to lead a virtuous (and also holy because she was religious) life. It's the only surviving work written by a woman from the Carolingian period, and it gives a lot of insight into common values, ideas, and social roles, particularly for women of the time. One historian, Pierre Riché bases a lot of his understanding of what kind of education was available to people in this period on his studies of Dhuoda's Handbook, the way she writes, and the things she writes about, etc. (Dhouda, xiii). She certainly is an important figure for historians from this period, and I had heard nothing about her before I began this project. In fact, her work was mostly viewed as useless, even possibly fake, until Riché published his translation in 1975, which is further evidence of her overlooked importance (Dhuoda, xiii).

For my project, I created a fake diary from the month or so before Dhuoda began writing her famous book. It details her thoughts, worries, and reasons for writing it, all of which are made up by me of course because there isn't a ton of information about her life outside of Liber Manualis. I wrote with ink and a calligraphy pen with changeable nibs, and it was very difficult. I am not good at calligraphy and never have been, as you can probably see in the quality of my work, and it was time-consuming and difficult, and I'm still fairly certain I was doing it incorrectly the whole time. 

I am pretty happy with the way that this turned out based on my previous experience and expectations, and I was really glad to get to do some more research into one of these relatively unknown and unrecognized historical female writers. There are so many women who did amazing work who we will never know about, but I am very glad that I was able to learn a little bit more and spend some time thinking about the life and perspective of, one of the women who we do. 

Sources:

Cherewatuk, Karen. "Speculum Matris: Duoda's Manual." Florilegium, vol. 10. 

     Florilegium, journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/flor/article/view/19220. 

     Accessed 8 Oct. 2020.

Dhuoda, and Carol Neel. Handbook for William: a Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.