Women and geography on the early modern English stage / Katja Pilhuj.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pilhuj, Katja, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Series:

Gendering the late medieval and early modern world

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cartography in literature--History--Early modern, 1500-1700.

Cartography in literature.

Women in literature--History--Early modern, 1500-1700.

Women in literature.

Theater--England--History--Early modern, 1500-1700.

Theater.

History.

England.

Physical Description:

276 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press B.V., [2019]

Summary:

In a late 1590s atlas proof from cartographer John Speed, Queen Elizabeth appears above as a powerful arbiter of measurement in her kingdom. For Speed, the queen was a formidable female presence, authoritative, ready to measure any place or person. The atlas, finished during James' reign, omitted her picture. But this disappearance did not mean Elizabeth vanished entirely; her image and her connection to geography appear in multiple plays and maps. Elizabeth becomes, like the ruler she holds, an instrument applied and adapted. This book explores the ways in which mapmakers, playwrights, and audiences in early modern England could, following their queen's example, use the ideas of geography, or "world- writing," to reshape the symbolic import of the female body and territory to create new identities. The book demonstrates how early modern mapmakers and dramatists - men and women - conceived of and constructed identities within a discourse of fluid ideas about space and gender.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9789463722018

9463722017

OCLC:

1111393461