I’ve compiled this woefully incomplete list of medieval women’s poetry in translation partly as self-promotion and partly in order to share resources. Additions are welcome. Happy #WITMonth, everyone!

Classical Arabic, 4000 BCE – 1492 CE

• Abdullah al-Udhari, tr. & ed. Classical Poems by Arab Women. Saqui Books, 1999.

Hebrew, 10th – mid-15th centuries

• Shirley Kaufman, Galit Hasan-Rokem, & Tamar S. Hess, ed. The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present. New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1999. [See the wife of Dunash Ben Labrat, of late 10th-century Andalusia, and Merecina of Gerona, of mid-15th-century Catalonia, on pages 62-65.]

Latin, 1st–16th centuries

• Larissa Bonfante, tr. The Plays of Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim. Robert Chipock. Mundelein: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2013.
• Barbara Newman, tr. & ed. Hildegard of Bingen: Symphonia. 2^nd Ithaca: Yale University Press, 1998.
• Jane Stevenson, tr. & ed. Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority, from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Katharina Wilson, tr. Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: A Florilegium of her Works. D. S. Brewer, 1998.

Classical Chinese, 9th–16th centuries

• Kang-I Sun Chang & Haun Saussy, tr. & ed. Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism. Stanford University Press, 2018.
• Kenneth Rexroth & Ling Chung, tr. Li Ch’ing-chao: Complete Poems. New Directions, 1979.

Early Middle Japanese, 8th–12th centuries

• Tony Barnstone & Chou Ping, tr. “Xue Tao (768–831).” The Drunken Boat. 
• Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aratani, tr. The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan. Knopf Doubleday, 2015.
• Kenneth Rexroth & Ikuko Atsumi, tr. Women Poets of Japan. New Directions, 1977.
• Hiroaki Sato, tr. String of Beads: Complete Poems of Princess Shikishi. University of Hawaii Press, 1993.
• Philip Tudor Harries, tr. The Poetic Memoirs of Lady Daibu. Stanford University Press, 1980.
• David Young & Jian I. Lin, tr. The Clouds Float North: The Complete Poems of Yu Xian Ji. Wesleyan University Press, 1998.

Kannada, 12th century

• Vinaya Chaitanya, tr. Songs for Siva: Vacanas of Akka Mahadevi. HarperCollins India.

Old Norse, 9^th–13^th centuries

• Straubhaar, Sandra Ballif. Old Norse Women’s Poetry: The Voices of Female Skalds. Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2011.

Old Occitan (Provençal), 12^th & 13^th centuries

• Meg Bogin, ed. & tr. The Women Troubadours. Scarborough: Paddington Press, 1976.
• Matilda Bruckner, Laurie Shepard, & Sarah White, ed. & tr. Songs of the Women Troubadours. New York: Garland, 2000.
• Samantha Pious, tr. “Bieiris de Romans: Among the Trobairitz.” ed. Meg Bogin. Lunch Ticket (2015).

Italian, 13^th century

• Samantha Pious, tr. “La Compiuta Donzella: Three Sonnets.” ed. Gianfranco Contini. Doublespeak Magaine (Fall 2016). [Scroll down for the Table of Contents.]
• Samantha Pious, tr. “A Sonnet by La Nina Siciliana.” [Seeking a home!]

Old French, 12^th & 13^th centuries

• Judy Shoaf, tr. The Lais of Marie de France: A Verse Translation. 1991–1996.
• Eglal Doss-Quinby, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Wendy Pfeffer, & Elizabeth Aubrey, ed. & tr. Songs of the Women Trouvères. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Dutch, 13th century

• Columbia Hart, tr. The Complete Works of Hadewijch. Paulist Press, 1980.

Middle French, 14^th & 15^th centuries

• Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski & Kevin Brownlee, tr. The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan. New York: Norton, 1997.
• Charity Cannon Willard, ed. The Writings of Christine de Pizan. New York: Persea Books, 1993.
• Maryann Corbett, tr. “Christine de Pizan, Ballades 11 & 53, from Cent Ballades.” String Poet (Winter 2011).
• Maryann Corbett, tr. “Christine de Pizan, Ballade 37, from Other Ballades.” Able Muse (Summer 2011).
• [Ask me about my translation of the Cent Ballades d’Amant et de Dame of Christine de Pizan!]

Catalan, 14th century

• Kathleen McNerney, tr. “La Reyna de Mallorques.” Catalan Review 5.2 (1991): 163-167.
• [My new translation of Lady Tecla’s verse exchange with Ausiàs March is now seeking a home!]

Kashmiri, 14th century

• Coleman Barks, tr. Naked Song. Maypop Books, 1992.
• Ranjit Hoskote, tr. I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded. Penguin Classics, 2013.

Middle Welsh, 15^th & 16^th centuries

• Katie Gramich, tr. & ed. The Works of Gwerful Mechain. Broadview, 2018.
• A. M. Juster, tr. “Gwerful Mechain, To Her Husband for Beating Her.” Rattle 55 (Spring 2017).

Old Spanish, 15^th century

• Samantha Pious, tr. “Two Poems by Florencia Pinar in Translation.” The Berkeley Poetry Review 46. 2016. [Click the first link to read the whole issue online, or the second to purchase a copy in print.]

Middle High German, 11^th–16^th centuries

• Albrecht Classen, tr. Late-Medieval German Women’s Poetry: Secular and Religious Songs. Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2004.
• James Rushing, tr. Ava’s New Testament Narratives: When the Old Law Passed Away. Kalamazoo, 2003.

Here is a list—by no means complete!—of women-authored translations from the Ancient Greek of Sappho (ca. 630 – ca. 570 B.C.E.).

• Louise Labé (1524-1566), Sonnet 7 (1555), an adaptation of Sappho 31 into a French sonnet
• Anne (Le Fèvre) Dacier (1647? – 1720), Les Poésies de Sappho de Lesbos (1681), translations into French prose
• Anonymous (“Fille d qualité de Guyenne, âgée seulement de dix-huit ans”), “Ode de Sapho à son amie” (1684), an adaptation into French verse after Anne Dacier’s prose translation of Sappho 31
• Clotilde de Surville (ca. 1405–ca. 1498), “Qu’à mon gré ceste-là va primant sur les Dieux” (published in 1803 & 1826), two adaptations of Sappho 31 into French verse
• Renée Vivien (née Pauline Mary Tarn, 1877–1909), Sapho (1903), adaptations into French verse
• Édith de Beaumont (1877–1952), Poèmes de Sapho (1950), translation into French free verse
• H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886–1961), “Fragment Forty,” an adaptation into English verse
• Mary Barnard, Sappho: A New Translation (1958), translations into English verse
• Marguerite Yourcenar, La Couronne et la Lyre (1979), adaptations into French verse
• Anne Carson, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (2003), translations into English verse
• Aurora Luque, Safo: Poemas y testimonios (2004), Spanish
• Rosita Copioli, Saffo: Più oro dell’oro (2006), translations into Italian verse
• Maria Rosa Llabrés Ripoli, Cants de Safo (2006), Catalan
• Susan Hawthorne, “Fragment 16,” in Sinister Wisdom 81 (2010), English
• Mary Meriam, “who leaves me rootless,” in Girlie Calendar (2014), imitation into English verse
• Josephine Balmer, Sappho: Poems and Fragments (2nd edition, 2018)

For more information on Sappho’s “afterlives,” you can consult:

• Jane McIntosh Snyder, Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho (1997)
• Margaret Reynolds, The Sappho Companion (2000)
• Philippe Brunet, L’Égal des dieux: Cent et une versions d’un poème de Sappho (2018)