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Bringing together some of the most important poetic texts of the Anglo-Saxon period, Anne Klinck presents the poems both as discrete entities and as members of an elegiac group, all inspired by the sense of separation from one's desire that is at the heart of elegiac poetry in Old English. Klinck analyses the poems' manuscript context in the Exeter Book - along with their possible dates and dialectal provenance, and the main critical problems they raise - and presents the texts with detailed textual notes and an apparatus criticus of editorial variants. She then examines the elegiac genre in Old English: its features, origins, and affinities (giving examples of analogous elegies in Latin, Norse, and Early Welsh, with both text and translation). Klinck includes a comprehensive bibliography and a glossary listing all word-forms to be found in the elegies.
The author shows that understanding of femininity in ancient Greece can be expanded by going beyond poetry composed by women poets like Sappho to explore girls' and women's choral songs from the archaic period, songs for female choruses and characters in tragedy, and lyrical representations of women's rituals and cults. The book discusses poetry as performance, relevant kinds and genres of poetry, the definition and scope of "woman's song" as a mode, partheneia (maidens' songs) and the girls' chorus, lyric in the drama, echoes and imitations of archaic woman's song in Hellenistic poetry, and inferences about the differences between male and female authors. It demonstrates that woman's song is ultimately best understood as the product of a male-dominated culture but that feminine stereotypes, while refined by male poets, are interrogated and shifted by female poets. The book traces the evolution of female-voice lyric from 600 to 100 BCE and includes Alcman, Sappho, Corinna, Pindar, other lyric poets, lyric in the drama, and the Hellenistic poets Nossis, Theocritus, and Bion.
A considerable collection of German women's poetry in translation, results of ingenious archival research.
The study takes the received view among scholars that women in the Middle Ages were faced with sustained misogyny and that their voices were seldom heard in public and subjects it to a critical analysis. The ten chapters deal with various aspects of the question, and the voices of a variety of authors - both female and male - are heard. The study opens with an enquiry into violence against women, including in texts by male writers (Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Straßburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach) which indeed describe instances of violence, but adopt an extremely critical stance towards them. It then proceeds to show how women were able to develop an independent identity in various genres ...
The first comprehensive study of heroic women figures in Anglo-Saxon literature investigates English secular and religious prose and poetry from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. Given the paucity of surviving literature from the Anglo-Saxon period, the works which feature major women characters -- often portrayed as heroes -- seem surprisingly numerous. Even more striking is the strength of the female characterizations, given the medieval social ideal of women as peaceful, passive members of society. The task of this study is to examine the existing sources afresh, asking new questions about the depictions of women in the literature of the period. Particular attention is focused on the failed, possibly adulterous women of 'The Wife's Lament' and 'Wulf and Eadwacer', the monstrous mother of Grendel in 'Beowulf', and the chaste but heroic figures and saints Judith, Juliana, and Elene. The book relies for its analysis on recent and standard texts in Anglo-Saxon studies and literature, as well as a thorough grounding in Latin and vernacular historical documents and Anglo-Saxon writings other than the focal literary texts.
Re-examines a critical tradition unchallenged since the 19th century. The 20 essays reassess the place of women in Anglo-Saxon culture as demonstrated by the laws, works by women, and the depiction of them in the standard Old English canon of literature (Beowulf, Alfred, Wulfstan, et al.) Categories include the historical record, sexuality and folklore, language and gender characterization, and several deconstructions of stereotypes. Paper edition (unseen), $14.50. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Includes entries for maps and atlases.
"It is not possible to reconstruct a paradigmatic thiasos which lies behind the women's songs, but certain characteristic features merge, especially the pervasiveness of homoerotic attachments and the combination of a personal, affective, with a social, religious function. In general, women's groups in ancient Greece must have served as a counterbalance to the prevailing male order. However, while some of the women's thiasoi provide a vehicle for the release of female aggression, the function of the present group is essentially harmonious and integrative." --