When looking for a scholarly article about one of the texts i stumbled on one that went with a lot of the texts we read as a whole. The article that I read is titled Men and Women as Represented in Medieval Literature and Society. In this article there is a lot about how the women and men are thought to be portrayed, which is the men being heroic and the women being damsels in distress. In this article it is refuting that idea and saying what the stories are actually like. It also talks about how women are not usually given the main role of a story, they are generally the supporting roles to the medieval texts. Another reason it gives for having women in the stories was to recognize the men in the stories for their brave and heroic acts, even if they died which meant there would be people to mourn when they died as well. It also talks about how Grendel's mother is characterized differently since she is an outcast because she is a descendant of Cain. It says that she does not have to live up to these morals that the other women are living up to.
After reading this article I think that it is pretty spot on with what it has to say about women in these stories. Also what it says about the men in many of the stories. This article is something that would help a person get to thinking on what women and men were thought to do in the Medieval Literature times. It not only discusses what the roles of men and women have in the texts form Medieval Literature but also what people who do not really read much of it usually think about it. It is a great way to summarize most of the readings taht we have done over the semester, because it talks about a couple of the people that we have read about in class.
http://digitalcommons.apus.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=saberandscroll
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