Reviews for Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate

The average rating for Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-12-21 00:00:00 Jacob Davis Perry is obviously well read in classical literature, German literature, and British culture and literature. The book has 13 chapters and an excursus. The first three chapters lay out the basic understanding of Homer (1), the epics (2), and their reception by the West at the time of writing (3). Perry has a good grasp of the scholarship, and the first chapter is actually a very good summary of "The Homeric Question." Perry's discussion of women doesn't actually start until Chapter 4, and this discussion is completely dominated by "patriarchal simplicity" in the "primitive culture." Much of his evidence for patriarchal simplicity surrounds Homeric women's role as a mother, which I find an interesting observation, since the majority of mothers are women no matter the gender politics of the culture. Perry does make an attempt to grapple with the intersection of gender and class, but of course his discussion is really only on the royal women, goddesses, and demigoddesses. Perry makes little attempt to analyze Eurycleia or the many handmaids and lower class women in the Homeric epics. In Chapter 5, Homer attempts to reconstruct the culture of marriage in the age of the epics. Perry reduces, fairly, marriage to an economic agreement at the level of the trade of animals or slaves. Women were little more than (usually) well-treated slaves. Unfortunately, Perry's true views are brought to the surface by his adjectives and adverbs ("please," "wonderful," "inevitable"). He also makes value judgments based on his views of "European vs. Oriental." For instance, polygamy is bad, while concubinage is fine. Perry makes a thorough discussion of women's dress in Homer in Chapter 6. He describes the items one by one and discusses who wears each item. My main issues with this chapter deal again with Perry's romantic views of the Greeks and their "subtle" or "natural intelligence." I find this particularly problematic, because the discussion is often about the ways in which the Greeks borrowed cultural practices from the "Orientals." The Greek's "native intelligence" seems to know what is appropriate and inappropriate (moral and immoral) to steal from the "Orientals." Perry makes no reflection on the subjectivity of these morals. I do like his discussion of the importance of Phoenicia and all of the contemporary scholarly developments on Phoenician culture, history, art, archaeology, and trade. Chapters 7-13 are discussions of the important female goddesses, demigoddesses, and mortals in the epics. He includes a discussion of Hera, Athene, Aphrodite, Artemis, Calypso, Circe, Thetis, Andromache, Helen, Penelope, Hekabe, and Nausicaa (and Ino-Leukothea). These are comprehensive but basic overviews of the characters and their basic plot points. It reads almost like a study on textual evidence. With the goddesses, he doesn't actually focus in their role in Homer but in their role in classical literature in general. It would have been very interesting if he had actually made a comparison between Homeric epic and the rest of classical literature and made an analysis of these differences with respect to the various issues of the first three chapters (the Homeric question and reception). Much of these chapters is basically an English summary of every part where each woman shows up in the epic. It's better to just read Homer and pay attention to the women. Perry's discussion of the women picks up in his analysis of the mortal women (Chs. 11-13). He does a good job of comparing what Homer actually says about these women and what their reception is in classical Greek tragedy, Roman literature, up to modern art, literature, and culture. He has a particularly good sense of the ancient scholarship on these characters, and he peppers in interesting references to current British artists, Goethe, and Ibsen. The Excursus was a brief run down of the portrayal of women in Greek literature after Homer until the Alexandrian romances. It is very brief but covers the basic evolution of the cycles of misogyny through poignant examples. The books ends abruptly with Menander. There are appendices, which give the Greek text and translations of many of his references (especially outside the epics themselves.) I did not check these for accuracy. Criticism: His reading of the Homeric women is very much through a Victorian lens. Often his discussion seems quite modern, but at other times he harps on about the joys of "simple patriarchy." He also returns to the issue of European vs. "Oriental," with everything good and moral about Greek culture the natural European base and everything evil, luxurious, and immoral the "Oriental" influence. The book reads at a very amateurish level, although he constantly makes remarks that are, in my opinion, beyond the amateur level, like assuming the author has a working understanding of specific Homeric scholars. Anyone who has read Homer in the Greek or has really studied Homer in translation will already be familiar with over half of his book. Most of the information goes no further than a Wikipedia article of the women. This may have been a useful text in 1898, but with only a few additional, scattered observations, the book today is superfluous. He is not making any contributions to scholarship in this book. He does, however, summarize the contemporary scholarship succinctly, and he provides a concise narrative of the role of women in Homer. The book could have used section headings and clearer organization within each chapter. Interesting Quotes: "One of the strongest inherent tendencies in the human mind is that which impels us to search for the origin of all the more striking phenomena of external nature, and all the more brilliant developments of the human intellect." "[Homer's] clear sweet voice rings in our ears from the unfathomable depths of the ages, and, like the voice of Nature herself, thrills our hearts with ineffable delight." "[Homer] is the faithful echo of traditions older than himself, and he is evidently describing a state of transition in which Oriental luxury and rude and squalid barbarism existed side by side." "There are but few passages in Homer which can wound the most delicate sensibility. There is no trace in Homer of the loathsome vices which polluted the Greeks of the classical period, no ludicrous fauns or satyrs." "We delight in [Homer's] picture of the simple patriarchal life, with its entire freedom from all affectation and hypocrisy, all attempt to simulate or dissimulate emotion." "One of the greatest vices of modern literature is the boastful display of the subjective feelings of the author." "The lady of Homer is the true lady of all times and nations." "It is hardly necessary to point out that in the primitive as in the modern world, civilization was in the main fostered and advanced by women." "In every crisis of Odysseus' fate it is a goddess, a nymph, or a woman who comes to save him. The great goddess Athene, the immortal nymphs Calypso, Circe, and Ino-Leucothea, the queenly Arete, and above all the peerless maiden Nausicaa, appear successively, in the very nick of time, to save him from impending disaster and death."

Review # 2 was written on 2011-02-11 00:00:00 Nicholas Evans Chaucer clearly indulged himself in irony and satire in this saint's tale. The worldy Prioress, so concerned with her looks and table manners in the "General Prologue," makes the reader immediately suspicious. The motto on her brooch, "Love conquers all," is put to the test in her virulent, anti-Semitic story, Chaucerian irony at its finest.