A woman's words
Subtitle: Emer and female speech in the Ulster Cycle
By: Joanne Findon.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Toronto; Buffalo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 211
Subjects: Epic literature, Irish -- History and criticism.; Women -- Ulster (Northern Ireland and Ireland) -- History -- Middle Ages, 500-1500.; Tales -- Ulster (Northern Ireland and Ireland) -- History and criticism.; Women and literature -- Ulster (Northern Ireland and Ireland); Tales, Medieval -- History and criticism.; Emer (Legendary character); Women -- Ireland -- Language.; Speech in literature.; Ulster (Northern Ireland and Ireland) -- Languages.
Description: A Woman's Words is the first in-depth analysis of Middle Irish literature from a feminist standpoint, and the first formal critical discussion of the representation of female speech in medieval Irish literature. Joanne Findon analyses the representation of Emer, the wife of the great Irish hero Cu Chulainn, in four linked medieval Irish tales, and discusses Emer's ability to use powerful, effective words to change her fictional world and the audience's reading of that fictional world.

A Woman's Words considers Emer as a literary figure rather than a mythic archetype or a reflection of a pre-Christian Celtic goddess. Emer and the narratives she inhabits are discussed as literary constructs, and are considered within the historical and legal milieu in which these tales were told, recorded, and read.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-203) and index.