Ladies' men, the ladies' text, and the English renaissance / Juliet Fleming.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Microformat

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Fleming, Juliet.

Contributor:

Quilligan, Maureen, 1944- advisor.

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English--Penn dissertations.

Penn dissertations--English.

Local Subjects:

English--Penn dissertations.

Penn dissertations--English.

Physical Description:

vi, 181 leaves : illustrations ; 29 cm

Production:

1990.

Summary:

This dissertation investigates the textual gesture whereby a male author--the ladies' man of my title--directs his works specifically or "only" to women. Claiming that the ladies' text is not a marginal phenomenon, but comprises the heart of the Elizabethan non-dramatic canon, I explore the role that gender differentiation has played in the creation of literary and linguistic conventions that are still powerful, including the rule of "standard" English, the social status of French, and the reputation and uses of romance.

Chapter one describes the formal and functional characteristics of the ladies' text; which include its being belated, supplemental, appropriative, cross-dressed, and--since it both displays and attempts to enact the potential danger that women have to fear from the helpful male--violent. I demonstrate the prevalence of this gesture in the literature of early modern England, outline the involvement of the ladies' text in the social, political, and technological possibilities of that historical moment, and discuss the implications of its critical occlusion.

Chapter two reads George Pettie's Petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure (1575) and Barnaby Rich's Farewell to Militarie Profession (1581), to demonstrate how two bitter and reluctant ladies' men dramatise their distaste for the task of catering to women that they have set for themselves. Chapter three asks why the first three dictionaries of vernacular English were all addressed, at least in part, to women; and describes how stereotypes of masculinity and femininity were deployed to mark and facilitate the progress of English from a "barbarous" to a standard language. Chapter four reads the first French phrase book for women; and five charts the historical and critical reputation of euphuism as a language spoken by women at Elizabeth's court. I conclude with a consideration of the affordances that the ladies' text may, after all, have offered its female readers.

Notes:

Supervisor: Maureen Quilligan.

Thesis (Ph.D. in English) -- Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, 1990.

Includes bibliography.

Local Notes:

University Microfilms order no.: 91-12560

OCLC:

187454129