Womens Roles in Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and

Changing Womens Roles in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the blue jet Knight and The Canterbury TalesOver the course of time, the roles of men and women find changed dramatically. As women bring forth increasingly gained more social recognition, they have also earned more significant roles in society. This change is clearly reflected in numerous works of literature, one of the most representative of which is Plautuss 191 B.C. drama Pseudolus, in which we meet the prostitute Phoenicium. Although the motivation behind nearly every action in the play, she is glimpsed solo briefly, never speaks directly, and earns little respect from the male characters surrounding her, a situation that roughly parallels a womans role in Roman society of that period. Women of the time, in other words, were to be seen and not heard. Their sole purpose was to please or to benefit men. As time passed, though, women earned more responsibility, allowing them to become stronger and hold more influe nce. The women who enliven Lope de Vegas early seventeenth-century drama Fuente Ovejuna, for instance, rose up against not only the male officials of their tiny village, but the cruel (male) dictator busy oppressing so very much of Spain as a whole. The roles women play in literature have evolved correspondingly, and, by comparing The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife of Baths Prologue, we can see that fictional women have just as increasingly as their real-word counterparts used gender differences as weapons against men.The epic poem Gilgamesh is the first heroic epic of world literature. The role of the unproblematic mortal woman mentioned in it is only to benefit and please men, and with little or no consideration as to how she feels... ...orks CitedBurrow, J.A. From The Third Fitt. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Ed. Denton Fox. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice-Hall, 1968. 27-45.Cox, Catherine S. Gender and Language in Chaucer. Gainesville, Florida U of Florida P, 1997. Everett, Dorothy. From The Alliterative Revival. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Ed. Denton Fox. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice-Hall, 1968. 3-26.Harris, Rivkah. Gender and Aging in Mesopotamia. Oklahoma U of Oklahoma P, 2000. Lawall, Sarah, et al. The Norton Anthology of humanity Masterpieces. Vol. I. 7th ed. New York Norton,1999. Nelson, Marie. Biheste is Dette Marriage promises in Chaucers Canterbury Tales. 2001. Dept. of English, Wentworth University. 15 July 2003 <http//www.wentworth.edu/nelson/chaucer