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- Assumptions about "human" vices
and virtues take on very different tenors
according to the religious, political, and
philosophical preoccupations of the time.
Medieval morality plays, for example, stand
in striking contrast to Samuel Johnson's "The
Vanity of Human Wishes," covered in "The
Restoration and the Eighteenth Century" (see
volume 1C, pages 2662–2670).
- A distinctly female perspective of life
in Britain, spanning its history, may be
found by comparing Margery Kempe's concerns
in The Book of Margery Kempe with
Virginia Woolf's concerns in "A
Room of One's Own," covered in "The
Twentieth Century" (see volume 2C, pages
2153–2214).
- The adaptation of classical poetry to express
contemporary concerns is evident in both
Old English and Renaissance poetry. Compare
Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury
Tales with Edmund Spencer's The
Faerie Queene, covered in "The Sixteenth
Century and Early Seventeenth Century" (see
volume 1B, pages 624–863).
- Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury
Tales includes many stories narrated
by women, such as "The Wife of Bath's
Tale." Elizabeth Gaskell's "The
Old Nurse's Story," covered in "The
Victorian Age" (see volume 2B, pages
1319–1333), presents an updated version
of a storytelling from a female point of
view.
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