God and the Goddesses

Barbara Newman is Professor of English and Religion at Northwestern University and author of From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

"Newman has challenged and confused the established ways of medievalists. . . . When we look back fifty years from now, we will see this book as one that changed the face of scholarship and maybe even our understanding of Christianity itself." (Caroline Walker Bynum, Common Knowledge) "Extraordinary. . . . Although it is impossible to do justice to the breadth of knowledge so impressively displayed in this book, it is important to note how pleasurable it is to follow Newman's path through the alternatingly familiar and strange material she examines." (Journal of the American Academy of Religion) "In this provocatively and eloquently written study, Barbara Newman has directed her lifelong passion for the feminine in medieval Christian literature toward a finely tuned reading of female figures who have previously been approached (or misunderstood?) as allegories, personifications, symbols, or perhaps at best as feminine archetypes." (Speculum) "When Barbara Newman refers to 'goddesses' in the context of medieval belief, she is entirely serious. She cautions us that uncompromising monotheism should not be thought of as an inflexible norm. . . . Her range of evidence is phenomenal. . . . The lack of easy recognizability has impeded us from seeing what Barbara Newman has now placed majestically before us." (Times Literary Supplement) "The thesis is succinctly rendered by the book's title God (not Gods) and the Goddesses. This thesis suggests that the Church failed in its efforts to create a truly monotheistic religion. . . . An important contribution to medieval historical and literary scholarship." (Utopian Studies) "In her erudite and provocative book, Newman has given historians of Christianity much to discuss and to ponder." (International Review of Biblical Studies) "Rich and absorbing." (Modern Philology) "This is a big book, not simply in pages but in sheer breadth of vision." (Medium Aevum)