Of all creatures women be best is a fun read for those of you who enjoy the bouquet of your misogyny to be a bit more … subtle and condescending. The key for the poem seems to be the Latin phrase “Cuins contrarium verum est,” glossed as “The opposite of this is true,” which follows the title of the poem. While the text goes out of its way to address specific charges against women, namely that ladies are prone to gossip and enjoy spending their man’s earnings irresponsibly, it does so in a tongue-in-cheek way that instead reinforces the power of those stereotypes.
Obviously you have to grade things like bigotry on a curve. Given the fact that societal attitudes have shifted so drastically since the era these poems cover, it would be unfair to expect the author of the poem to adhere to our particular contemporary worldview. With that being said, one aspect that intrigued me about the poem was actually the introduction to the section on lyrics, which observes that many of these poets were likely members of the clergy. The possibility that “Of all creatures…” was written by a man of the cloth is interesting to consider given that celibacy was of course the norm for the clergy (at least in the lower rungs of the Church), and so the misogyny of the text is of a piece with Church orthodoxy. Just as the poet’s continued harping on how women are not [insert litany of awful things here] draws attention to the fact that the poet is instead insinuating exactly that, I wonder whether the lady-bashing of the text overcompensates for the difficulty of a priest or monk choosing the celibate life? It is a lot easier to avoid the temptation of settling down if all women are terrible she-beasts, after all. Did anyone else have any other reactions to the poem?
These lyrics also stuck out to me, not so much because I was offended (like you said, it’s important to keep the period in which it was written in mind,) but because I thought it was actually quite clever. The fact that all of the lyrics are written in a “tongue-in-cheek” manner and the only hint towards this is a small line written in Latin I thought was pretty witty. Also, a lot of the things the speaker is accusing women of being guilty of (gossiping, being impatient, spending their husband’s money) are trivial and therefore, not very offensive to me. I hadn’t thought about the fact that it probably was written by a clergy man, which is very interesting. I thought about this with “I lovede a child of this cuntree,” because it speaks about someone loving and missing a young man. I was curious as to whether this was truly written from the point of view of a man, or whether it was meant to invoke the point of view of a woman.
Like a lot of people have commented, it was in general more fun to read the secular lyrics, especially because they remind us that humankind remains somewhat the same throughout time. Though I found a lot of the religious lyrics somewhat hard to understand, I really appreciated “Stond well, moder, under Rode” because of the fact that it touches on the delicate relationship between a mother and her child and the heartbreak that follows a mother after losing her child. These lyrics were the most touching to me. One lyric I am interested in talking about more in class is “When Adam delf” because I honestly could not glean much meaning from it, though I know it is there.