Reviews for Unsung Women: The Anonymous Female Voice in Troubadour Poetry

The average rating for Unsung Women: The Anonymous Female Voice in Troubadour Poetry based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-07-13 00:00:00 Mark Zimmerman This is a highly speculative interdisciplinary approach to Anglo Saxon Paganism that explores some of the more curious passages in Old English literature that are thought to contain references to the Germanic gods. For those reared on David Wilson's standard work on Anglo Saxon Paganism, Richard North disregards Wilson's archaeological and place name approach to the subject by using the odd references to Ing in poems such as Beowulf and Exodus and comparing them with Norse literary texts. While yes, there's major problems to approaching the subject from this angle and a book of this type will always prove controversial. The first stumbling block is that most Old English texts cannot be sufficiently dated, nor a place of composition be established, therefore we cannot know whether a text has any Scandinavian influence from the Danelaw areas. Also the dating of the Norse texts proves to be a bigger problem because of their possible late 12th-13th century composition and also possible Christian influences. Nevertheless, North's book is well worth a read and will be well received by readers who enjoy the older style parallel/analogue studies that were popular in the good old (or bad old) days. North's main argument of the book is that the English belonged to the Ingaevonic tribal group, that Ing was a human male version of Nerthus and that the Scandinavian Ingvi-Freyr is one and the same, thus making Ing the main god Worshipped by the Anglo saxons, whilst also worshipping deities such as Woden and Thor. A very speculative, but enjoyable work.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-10-11 00:00:00 Joseph Anthony I'm not sure what Dionysis has to do with Anglo-Saxon Heathenism, but I understand the background of Tolkien's Ents better after reading this book.