Women and revenge in Shakespeare
Subtitle: gender, genre, and ethics
By: Marguerite A. Tassi
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Selinsgrove, PA
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9781575911311
Description: Can there be a virtue in vengeance? Can revenge do ethical work? Can revenge be the obligation of women? This wide-ranging literary study looks at Shakespeare's women and finds bold answers to questions such as these. A surprising number of Shakespeare's female characters respond to moral outrages by expressing a strong desire for vengeance. This book's analysis of these characters and their circumstances offers incisive critical perceptions of feminine anger, ethics, and agency and challenges our assumptions about the role of gender in revenge. In this provocative book, Marguerite A. Tassi counters longstanding critical opinions on revenge: that it is the sole province of men in Western literature and culture, that it is a barbaric, morally depraved, irrational instinct, and that it is antithetical to justice. Countless examples have been mined from Shakespeare's dramas to reveal women's profound concerns with revenge and justice, honor and shame, crime and punishment. In placing the critical focus on avenging women, this book significantly redresses a gender imbalance in scholarly treatments of revenge, particularly in early modern literature. - Publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Women and revenge: some literary, iconographic, and intellectual foundations; title: Valorous tongues, lamenting voices: the expressive ethics of female inciters in Shakespeare's plays; title: Reporting the women's causes aright: wounded names and revenge narratives in Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, and Much ado about nothing; title: Hecuba's legacy: wounded maternity and vengeance in the First tetralogy and Titus Andronicus; title: "Revenging home": Cordelia and the virtue of vengeance; title: Twelfth night, or what Maria wills; title: Feminine vindication and the social drama of revenge in The merry wives of Windsor; title: The quality of revenge: debt, reciprocity, and Portia's "vantage" in The merchant of Venice; title: Women's gall, women's grace: female friendship, moral rebuke, and the vindictive passions; title: Conclusion