Hymeneutics
Subtitle: interpreting virginity on the early modern stage
By: Marie H. Loughlin.
Publisher: Bucknell University Press; Associated University Presses
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Lewisburg; London; Cranbury, NJ
Language: eng
Number of pages: 226
Subjects: English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 -- History and criticism.; Virginity in literature.; Women and literature -- England -- History -- 16th century.; Chastity in literature.; Rape in literature.
Description: This book examines the socio-medical and anatomical construction of the virginal female body in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts in order to develop a historically and culturally specific understanding of virginity and chastity in early modern England. This investigation permits a reevaluation of a series of plays by John Fletcher and his collaborators approximately between 1609 and 1620 that concentrates heavily on the virginal and chaste woman.

Instead of seeing Fletcher's frequent, violent interrogations of these women as springing from his personal, pornographic proclivities (a charge which has often been levelled), contemporary medical and anatomical discourses demonstrate that the uncertainty about women's virginity which fuels such interrogations is widespread in the early modern period.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-221) and index.