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Article: Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing, Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Medium Aevum
- Article date:
- March 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), x + 244 pp. ISBN 0-8122-3628-9. 35.00 [pounds sterling].
Clare Lees and Gillian Overing tell us that 'this is a book about women's agency, but it is also a book about women's absence and presence as these may be traced in the partial record of Anglo-Saxon culture'. According to the authors the prominent role played by women in Anglo-Saxon society has been deliberately forgotten, silenced, or erased by the patriarchal universe in which the clerical sources of the Anglo-Saxon period were constructed and by conventional 'non-feminist' scholarship. By re-examining many familiar scholarly ...