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The female body has occupied a central place in the Western imagination, its images pervading poetry and story, mythology and religious doctrine, the visual arts, and scientific treatises. It has inspired both attraction and fear, been perceived as beautiful and unclean, alluring and dangerous, a source of pleasure and nurturing but also a source of evil and destruction. In The Female Body in Western Culture, twenty-three internationally noted scholars and critics, in specially commissioned essays, explore these representations and their consequences for contemporary art and culture. Ranging from Genesis to Gertrude Stein and Angela Carter, from ancient Greek ritual to the Victorian sleeping cure, from images of the Madonna to modern film and Surrealist art, the essays cover a wide spectrum of approaches and subject mailer. They all converge, however, around questions of power and powerlessness, voice and silence, subjecthood and objectification. And they point the way to the new possibilities and displacements of traditional male-female oppositions. Androgyny in a new key? This book demonstrates that a blurring of gender boundaries does not have to deny difference.
An abundance of rich and memorable female roles is one of the most striking features of turn-of-the-century European drama. Gail Finney traces the source of this phenomenon to large-scale upheavals in prevailing contemporary attitudes toward women. She cites two major developments in particular: the culmination in the years 1880–1920 of the first feminist movement; and Freud's formulation of his theories of sexuality, which emphasize differences between the sexes. Taking into account these strong, sometimes conflicting intellectual currents, Women in Modern Drama explores the dynamics of gender identity and family relationships in major plays by European make dramatists, including Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Wilde, Schnitzler, Synge, Hofmannsthal, Wedekind, and Hauptmann.
By examining orthodox methods of thought in the Renaissance, the author tries to reconstruct a picture of the dominant culture of the period in England between 1580 and 1630.
Language Machines questions any easily progressive model of technological change, demonstrating the persistence rather than the obsolescence of language technologies over time, the continuous and complicated overlap of pens, presses, screens and voice. In these essays new technologies do not simply replace, but rather draw upon, absorb, displace and resituate earlier technologies.
The great English Renaissance tragedy—violent, powerful, unforgettable—in a freshly edited and annotated student edition. “Neill’s edit of the play is very well done. … If there’s a more knowledgeable or erudite unraveling of the play, I haven’t seen it.” —Steve Sohmer, Comitatus This Norton Critical Edition of John Webster’s 1612–13 tragedy offers a newly edited and annotated text together with a full introduction and illustrative materials intended for student readers. The Duchess of Malfi’s themes of love, loyalty, and betrayal have resonated through the centuries, making this a perennially popular play with audiences and readers alike. This volume includes a gener...
The great English Renaissance tragedy—violent, powerful, unforgettable—in a freshly edited and annotated student edition. This Norton Critical Edition of John Webster’s 1612–13 tragedy offers a newly edited and annotated text together with a full introduction and illustrative materials intended for student readers. The Duchess of Malfi’s themes of love, loyalty, and betrayal have resonated through the centuries, making this a perennially popular play with audiences and readers alike. This volume includes a generous selection of supporting materials, among them Webster’s likely sources for the play (William Painter, George Whetstone, Simon Goulart, and Thomas Beard) as well as rel...
Crossing disciplinary and chronological boundaries, this volume integrates text and image, essays and object pages to explore the processes inherent in gender representation, rather than resituating women in particular categories or spheres as other scholarly publications and exhibitions have done. Taking its lead from the 'Picturing' Women project on which it reflects and builds, the volume makes a substantial methodological contribution to the analysis of gender discourse and visuality. It offers new and stimulating scholarship that confronts historical patterns of representation that have defined what women were and are seen to be, and presents new contexts for unveiling what art historian Linda Nochlin has called the 'mixed messages' of representations of women.
Fascinating and terrifying, the Medusa story has long been a powerful signifier in culture with poets, feminists, anthropologists, psychoanalysts, political theorists, artists, writers, and others. Bringing together the essential passages and commentary about Medusa, The Medusa Reader traces her through the ages, from classical times through the Renaissance to the pop culture, art, and fashion of today. This collection, with a critical introduction and striking illustrations, is the first major anthology of primary material and critical commentary on this most provocative and enigmatic of figures.
In the Greek mythological pantheon, the Gorgon Medusa stands a head above all others in her power to terrify. This book gives readers a close-up look at this snake-haired horror. Starting with details about Medusa's history, physical features, and supernatural powers, the text continues with a retelling of the classic myth of Perseus. It then takes a look at some of Medusa's other manifestations in classic art and literature as well as her role in modern pop culture. From fable to film, sculpture to song, the Gorgon continues to work her ancient magic on modern audiences.
Engaging critically with the political and aesthetic agenda behind the project of recovery, this collection of specially commissioned essays offers revisionary readings of both established canonical Victorian women poets and re-discovered writers.