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The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and
Representation
Edited by Laurel Amtower (San Diego State University)
and Dorothea Kehler (San Diego State University, Emerita)
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, single women in England
might occupy one of more categories in accordance with their life stages,
lifestyles, and economic status. Under the rubric of the single woman
are found widows; well-born "spinsters" provided for by their
families; entrepreneurs; wage earners, many of whom were servants or
farm workers; nuns and the handicapped (the latter also often sheltered
by the church); unwed mothers; cross-dressers, some of whom may have
been lesbians; kept women; and prostitutes. This anthology mirrors the
negotiations between the actual life circumstances of women and their
ideological constructions on the page and stage. These multivalent negotiations
in some ways sustain, in others contradict, the received notion of an
increasingly vehement patriarchialism limiting opportunities for women's
independence and offering few fictional models of women who found happiness
outside of marriage.
The contributions here are divided between those who discuss the stifling
effects of misogyny and those who uncover not only significant pockets
of resistance to inequality but also a sheer disregard of misogynous
traditions on the part of English institutions as well as individuals. This anthology will be of interest to graduate students and advanced
scholars in English medieval and Renaissance studies, including social
history and economics, the visual arts, and especially literature.
2003 / 242 pages / 86698-306-6 / MR263 / $35, £30
Women, Violence, and English Renaissance Literature: Essays Honoring Paul Jorgensen
Edited by Linda Woodbridge (Pennsylvania State University) and Sharon Beehler (Montana State University-Bozeman)
As
his scholarship and his former students can testify, Paul Jorgensen
was acutely aware of the richness of and sensed the potential to be
found in studies of represented women and violence. This collection
of essays brings together former students of Jorgensen and focuses their
attention on this topic. In these fourteen chapters, the authors range
over a variety of approaches to the subjected of represented violence
towards and by women, and in every case violence is regarded primarily
as a physical act. Rape, mutilation, kidnapping, and murder all figure
in the Part One accounts of female victims from Desdemona to Pocahontas;
while in Part Two, women are associated with violent acts from dueling
to filicide to butchery.
However, just as these essays grow out of an intellectual milieu centered on the representation of women and physical violence, so too do they give
rise to other areas of investigation: the suppression of discourse critical of wife-beating in fiction and drama; the imbalance between male and female
domestic violence in mainstream literature; and the fantastic forms of female violence taken in literature. Together, the ideas for future study suggested
here remind us of the extraordinarily fertile field we plow.
2003 / 256 pages / 86698-299-X / MR256
/ $40, £36
Women in Early Modern Germany: An Anthology of Popular Texts
Edited and Translated by Joy Wiltenburg (Rowan University)
This collection of short works in English translation provides a unique view into the depictions
of women that entertained broad audiences in early modern Germany. The twenty-one selections
cover a range of themes: marriage, love and sex, heroines, anti-heroines, work and household.
The introduction relates the texts to their historical context of early modern developments in
gender relations. The rhymed translations convey the rhythmic appeal and popular language of the
original texts. Though widely current in their time, such texts have long lain in obscurity,
difficult to find even for German specialists. This anthology is the first to make them available to
modern students and scholars in English translation. Including both German and English texts, the
collection offers valuable sources for study at all levels, from undergraduate to specialist.
2002 / 279 pages / 86698-291-4 / MR249 / $36, £32
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Other
MRTS Titles
The
Verse Miscellany of Constance Aston Fowler: A Diplomatic Edition
edited by Deborah Aldrich-Watson
Honorable
Mention,
Josephine A. Roberts Award for Best Scholarly Edition,
The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women
The
Collected Works of Anne Vaughan Lock
edited by Susan Felch
An
approved edition of the Committee on Scholarly Editions,
Modern Language Association of America
The Countess of Montgomery's Urania
by Lady Mary Wroth
The
First Part
edited by †Josephine A. Roberts
The Second Part
edited by †Josephine A. Roberts; completed by Suzanne
Gossett and Janel Mueller
1999 Scholarly Editions Special Award, The Society for the Study of
Early Modern Women
An Collins, Divine Songs and Meditacions
edited by Sidney Gottlieb
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