Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture
Subtitle: Emerging Subjects
Contributors: Valerie Traub (Editor); M. Lindsay Kaplan (Editor); Dympna Callaghan (Editor)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: October 28, 1996
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 317
ISBN-13: 9780521558198
Subjects: Feminism; Literary studies: 16th to 18th centuries; c 1500 to c 1600; English literature; 17th century; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Social Science; General; Sociology; Gender Studies; Europe - Great Britain - General; English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--; English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism; History / Great Britain; Literary Criticism-General; Social Science / Gender Studies; 16th century; History and criticism; Early modern, 1500-1700; England; Feminism and literature; History
First sentence: Sofonisba Anguissola's self-portrait, reproduced in the frontispiece of this book, depicts the artist flourishing her brush in a self-conscious articulation of professional identity.
Description: How did the events of the early modern period affect the way gender and the self were represented? This collection of essays attempts to respond to this question by analyzing a wide spectrum of cultural concerns -- humanism, technology, science, law, anatomy, literacy, domesticity, colonialism, erotic practices, and the theatre -- in order to delineate the history of subjectivity and its relationship with the postmodern fragmented subject. The scope of this analysis expands the terrain explored by feminist theory, while its feminist focus reveals that the subject is always gendered -- although the terms in which gender is conceived and represented change across history. "Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture" not only explores the representation of gendered subjects, but in its commitment to balancing the productive tensions of methodological diversity, also speaks to contemporary challenges facing feminism. -- From publisher's description.