The female tragic hero in English Renaissance drama / edited by Naomi Conn Liebler.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Liebler, Naomi Conn, 1944-

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English drama (Tragedy)--History and criticism.

English drama (Tragedy).

Heroines in literature.

English drama--Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600--History and criticism.

English drama.

Women and literature--England--History--16th century.

Women and literature.

England.

History.

Women and literature--England--History--17th century.

English drama--17th century--History and criticism.

Renaissance--England.

Renaissance.

Heroes in literature.

Women in literature.

Physical Description:

x, 242 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave, 2002.

Summary:

This book constitutes a new direction for feminist studies in English Renaissance drama. While feminist scholars have long celebrated heroic females in comedies, many have overlooked female tragic heroism, reading it instead as evidence of pervasive misogyny on the part of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Displacing prevailing arguments of "victim feminism, " the contributors to this volume engage a wide range of feminist theories, and argue that female protagonists in tragedies--Jocasta, Juliet, Cleopatra, Mariam, Webster's Duchess and White Devil, among others--are heroic in precisely the same ways as their more notorious masculine counterparts.

Contents:

Introduction: Wonder Woman, or the Female Tragic Hero / Naomi Conn Liebler 1

Euripides at Gray's Inn: Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh's Jocasta / Robert S. Miola 33

Visible Hecubas / Judith Weil 51

"Not Know Me Yet?": Looking at Cleopatra in Three Renaissance Tragedies / Mimi Still Dixon 71

The Heroic Tragedy of Cleopatra, the "Prostitute Queen" / Kay Stanton 93

Female Heroism in Heywood's Tragic Farce of Adultery: A Woman Killed with Kindness / Theresia de Vroom 119

"As If a Man Should Spit against the Wind" / Martin Orkin 141

Queen of Apricots: The Duchess of Malfi, Hero of Desire / Linda Woodbridge 161

The "Morris Witch" in The Witch of Edmonton / Laura Denker, Laurie Maguire 185

Sex and the Female Tragic Hero / Jeanne Addison Roberts 199.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [219]-234) and index.

ISBN:

0312220596

OCLC:

49681422