Reviews for Women of the Celts

The average rating for Women of the Celts based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-07-16 00:00:00 Dan Rupp Markale's book is a just a classic when it comes to "Celtic women and gender relations". The narrative is good and the author and the book is somehow easy reading and it seems that it takes you to a magic world. However I don't recommend it if you're not interested in 'fantasy' and is looking for a good book about 'Celtic History and Society' with academic quality. Markale's book has a lots of problems which I think only the following ones are worth mentioning in here: - Markale quotes both Ancient and Medieval sources without any reference, and writes them as if they're simply literature (almost like if he was the author of all of them and is just telling a fictional story). He uses all the sources according to his own interests without being careful to present them in a proper way. - The author wants to defend a 'harmonically idealised gender roles' hypotheses which is not historically sustained from Iron Age and Early Medieval Celtic societies. - Even if the gender dynamics occurred in a different way among the Celts, and women indeed were able to have a status accumulating by different ways social prestige and power, the author fails to present that in a non 'fictional' way. But in spite of all problems, this is a nice book for one to read and know about it since it's still a major reference for some persons.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-04-28 00:00:00 Amber Jewison There is much misunderstanding of what Northern Europe was like before the accursed Romans came north, killed as many of the locals as they could, and destroyed their culture and society. Markale, who lived in Bretagne/Brittany, has the great advantage that he did not have to overcome the English/German hatred for the native Celts ("kelt", there are no soft C's in Gaelic) or the overwhelming influence of the Irish, who just barely managed to preserve some small library of authentic writings. And even the Irish works were heavily censored and recast by Christian monks. In Celtic society, women were generally the equals of men at a time when the "civilized" Greeks and Romans were convinced that females were not even fully human. There were, for example, Druidesses and Queens. And of course there are the hints of the much older human understanding of woman as the Teacher and Initiator. Isn't odd that Eve, and not Adam, seeks wisdom from the Tree of Knowledge, and that it is Eve who tempts Adam, after which they suddenly realize they've always been naked? Sounds like the remnants of a very old story in which men always learned from women. Markale was a PROLIFIC author, each of his books connecting to the others and each containing a HUGE bibliography for additional reading. Oh, although the text is of course translated into English, it helps to know French because some of the notes remain in the orginal.