Shakespeare and Women (Oxford Shakespeare Topics)
"Phyllis Rackin's own contributions to Shakespeare in this book make for a witty, interesting, and frequently compelling read. Overall, this volume not only challenges Shakespeare specialists but can also reach and educate strong upper-level undergraduate students interested in the construction of women's roles in Shakespeare's plays and beyond."--Laura Feitzinger Brown,Sixteenth Century Journal"Phyllis Rackin has provided us with a deftly defined casebook for the reconsideration of feminist criticism in the twenty-first century that looks to the future through a clear articulation of that criticism's past.... In each chapter, Rackin provides an alternative to the limiting assumptions she describes and thus offers brave new ways of seeing.... [Rackin] reexamines with a steady feminist eye the man who persistently claims our critical interest. In focusing on the question of Shakespeare and women in the twenty-first century, Phyllis Rackin has renewed a sense of the feminist agenda within the field of Shakespeare studies. Most importantly, she has done so for the next generation of scholars in an affordable volume that will be invaluable in the graduate classroom."--Shakespeare Quarterly"Believing that historical research can provide rich resources to revitalize feminist criticism (if one looks for them), Rackin ably and amply points the way. She examines the place(s) of women in Shakespeare's world; the tendency to shape the canon in the reader's own image; the powerful truths Shakespeare offers about women (notably in Cleopatra) and life, truths evident despite or sometimes because of the use of boy actors; Shakespeare's 'complicated negotiation with the Petrarchan tradition' in the sonnets, which succeed, while addressing both sexes, in enabling women to think and feel honestly about themselves; and the continuous contemporaneousness of Shakespeare's women. The 'Further Reading' section is a vein of rich ore. Essential."--Choice