Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators in the English Renaissance

by Kronitiris,Tina

• ISBN13: 9780415063296
• ISBN10: 0415063299
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-04-10
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Oppositional Voices is a study of six women writers in the late Elizabethan period, who, ignoring Renaissance society's injunction that women should confine themselves to religious compositions, wrote and translated poetry, drama and romantic fiction. Tina Krontiris brings together their work, including at times their voiced opposition to certain oppressive ideas and stereotypes. Rather than simply glorify these voices, her study subtly probes the influence of a culture inimical to female creative activity on the writings of these women.

Table of Contents

List of figures
Acknowledgements
Culture, Change, and Women's Responses	p. 1
Servant Girls Claiming Male Domain	p. 27
Isabella Whitney: warning women to beware of men	p. 28
Margaret Tyler: asserting women's right to literature	p. 44
Noblewomen Dramatizing the Husband-Wife Conflict	p. 63
Mary Herbert: Englishing a purified Cleopatra	p. 64
Elizabeth Cary: idealizing and victimizing the transgressor	p. 78
Women of the Jacobean Court Defending Their Sex	p. 102
Aemilia Lanyer: Criticizing men via religion	p. 103
Mary Wroth: blaming tyrannical fathers and inconstant lovers	p. 121
Conclusion	p. 141
Notes	p. 147
Bibliography	p. 166
Index	p. 179
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