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Women In Early British Poetry
It is often said that a good story is timeless, but the best literature can also provide an insight into the time and place in which it was created, specifically its values and attitudes. The period spanning the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and Early Modern Period, in which some of the most important works of British Literature were written, has often been characterized in later periods as misogynistic, with women being seen as irrelevant or looked upon with loathing. But a closer examination of works from the first thousand years of British Literature shows that the position of women in the past was more complex than that. Seemingly insignificant characters, such as Queen Wealhtheow in Beowulf, can tell us a lot about the important role royal women played in Anglo-Saxon society, and mother monsters can tear that society apart. Depictions of sexualized women in High Medieval poetry can challenge the Madonna-Whore dichotomy and complicated female figures can be forces of creation or destructions in the works of some of England's greatest poets, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton.
By Rachel Lesch8 years ago in Poets
