Land of Women: Tales of Sex and Gender from Early Ireland

Cornell University Press, 1996. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Near Fine. A crisp clean first edition, no markings throughout, not an ex-lib: "This book disperses the shadows in an obscure but important landscape. Lis a Bitel addresses both the history of women in early Ireland and the histor y of myth, legend, and superstition which surrounded them. It is a powerful and exact book and an invaluable addition to our expanding sense of Irelan d through the eyes of Irish women."-Eavan Boland, author of In a Time of Vi olence: Poems "It is refreshing to read in a book by a woman on medieval women that not a ll clerics hated women and that not all men were oversexed villains conscio usly bent on exploiting women. Bitel challenges not only the medieval Irish male construct of female behavior, but she is also courageous enough to qu estion constructs of medieval women invented by modern Irish medieval histo rians."-Times Higher Education Supplement "Lisa M. Bitel's extraordinary excavation of pre-modern women's lives . . . is useful and fascinating. . . . Male-authored medieval texts provide acce ss to prevailing gender ideologies and at the same time reflect anxieties a bout how these ideologies were threatened by the productive reality of wome n's lives. . . . As Bitel shows in her beautifully written account, early I reland witnessed a wide range and flexibility in gender relations."-Nancy J . Curtin, Lingua Franca "An overview of this kind is not an easy undertaking. . . If by provoking the specialists Bitel gives an impulse to the indispensible groundwork, she fully deserves our gratitude."-Doris Edel, Utrecht University.