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Stacy S. Klein, Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). xiv + 282 pp. ISBN 0-268-03310-2. $30.00.
Recent decades have witnessed the publication of a series of book-length studies focused on the place of women in Anglo-Saxon society and literature. Some have approached the question of gender from a marked theoretical perspective, often addressing a community of feminist scholars, inviting readers into an awareness of an earlier period of literature too often neglected. Other criticism has been more squarely directed at Anglo-Saxonists better grounded in primary materials, but who have been offered fresh perspectives on texts which often demanded and facilitated feminist readings. Stacy Klein's monograph comes at a moment when the role of theory in the academy and in scholarship is itself being interrogated, and when feminist (and other theoretical) readings are increasingly likely...