ABSTRACT
Although narrative and world have been interwoven at every point in the chapters of Part Two, in shifting my emphasis more directly in Part Three to the influence of everyday life, I have an opportunity to examine more closely the relationship of the SEL poet to his culture. I have chosen to limit my focus in this chapter to representations of women, in part because I am particularly interested in exploring the attitudes reflected by the poet in these representations, but also because readers unfamiliar with any other aspect of the SEL are likely to have heard of its virgin martyrs, a fact both interesting in itself and significant for the impact it has had on our understanding of the collection as a whole.
