Woman as Hero in Old English Literature

The first comprehensive study of heroic women figures in Anglo-Saxon literature investigates English secular and religious prose and poetry from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. Given the paucity of surviving literature from the Anglo-Saxon period, the works which feature major women characters -- often portrayed as heroes -- seem surprisingly numerous. Even more striking is the strength of the female characterizations, given the medieval social ideal of women as peaceful, passive members of society. The task of this study is to examine the existing sources afresh, asking new questions about the depictions of women in the literature of the period. Particular attention is focused on the failed, possibly adulterous women of 'The Wife's Lament' and 'Wulf and Eadwacer', the monstrous mother of Grendel in 'Beowulf', and the chaste but heroic figures and saints Judith, Juliana, and Elene. The book relies for its analysis on recent and standard texts in Anglo-Saxon studies and literature, as well as a thorough grounding in Latin and vernacular historical documents and Anglo-Saxon writings other than the focal literary texts.

Jane Chance's short but well-documented study of heroic female figures in the literature of the Anglo-Saxon period is a refreshing interpretation of several important texts by analysis of the social values usually ascribed to aristocratic women and each writer's reference to these, either by inverting the normally perceived role or in the reinforcement of it.
- Jonathan W. Nicholls, University of Warwick
'Modern Language Review'


Jane Chance's 'Woman as Hero in Old English Literature' appears at a time when scholars are turning increasingly to the early Middle Ages in search of more flexible roles for women than those provided in the putative renaissances of later centuries . . . Throughout her discussion Chance displays consistent strengths in her attentiveness to the implication of words and images and in her concern to integrate patristic and Germanic customary expectations about women's roles and nature.

- Hope Weissman, Wesleyan University
'Speculum'


Jane Chance, Professor of English and Women and the Study of Gender at Rice University, has published twenty books and many articles and reviews on medieval women, medieval feminist historiography and mythography, Geoffrey Chaucer, and modern medievalism (Tolkien in particular), among other topics. Her most recent book is a pioneering collection of biographical profiles and memoirs entitled Women Medievalists and the Academy (2005), with seventy contributors. Among her other books are Christine de Pizan's Letter of Othea to Hector"" (1990), Medieval Mythography: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, AD 433-1177 (1994)--winner of the 1994 South Central Modern Language Association Book Award--and several collections, including Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages (1996). Her essay on Beowulf, The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel's Mo...