Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts

This is an excellent book about the literary tradition of misogyny (hatred of women) in Europe. I first encountered this book in a Chaucer course, and it opened up a whole new vision of interpretation of classical and medieval materials and further forward through literary history. This book is a definite must for anyone studying history, literature, or for that matter, life in general, as it brings forth some of the origins of misogynist ideology.

Woman Defamed and Woman Defended is a highly useful book for anyone interested in the medieval querelle des femmes or in women's history. It gathers together the major Late Classical and Medieval writers who addressed the issue of women's place in the world, allowing one to read the relevant excerpts without having to hunt through all of those writers' works (which can be a very daunting task in the case of someone like Ovid or Augustine). As the title suggests, the book highlights not only women's detractors, but also their defenders (including proto-feminists such as Christine de Pizan) to counter some of the nastier misogynistic passages. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of gender in the West, especially those who confine the main part of their work to the 19th and 20th centuries. The Western so-called "war of the sexes" has its ultimate roots in this material, despite the way that (in my experience) it is often ignored or glossed over in classes that deal directly with gender.