Overview
The question is not whether Shakespeare studies needs feminism, but whether feminism needs Shakespeare. This is the explicitly political approach taken in the dynamic and newly updated edition of A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare.
- Provides the definitive feminist statement on Shakespeare for the 21st century
- Updates address some of the newest theatrical andcreative engagements with Shakespeare, offering fresh insights into Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and gender dynamics in early modern England
- Contributors come from across the feminist generations and from various stages in their careers to address what is new in the field in terms of historical and textual discovery
- Explores issues vital to feminist inquiry, including race, sexuality, the body, queer politics, social economies, religion, and capitalism
- In addition to highlighting changes, it draws attention to the strong continuities of scholarship in this field over the course of the history of feminist criticism of Shakespeare
- The previous edition was a recipient of a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award; this second edition maintains its coverage and range, and bringsthe scholarship right up to the present day
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781118501207 |
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Publisher: | Wiley |
Publication date: | 03/15/2016 |
Series: | Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture |
Sold by: | JOHN WILEY & SONS |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 584 |
Sales rank: | 1,033,582 |
File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors xPreface to the Second Edition xvii
Introduction 1Dympna Callaghan
Part I The History of Feminist Shakespeare Criticism 19
1 The Ladies’ Shakespeare 21Juliet Fleming
2 Margaret Cavendish, Shakespeare Critic 39Katherine M. Romack
3 Misogyny Is Everywhere 60Phyllis Rackin
Part II Text and Language 75
4 Feminist Editing and the Body of the Text 77Laurie E. Maguire
5 “Made to write ‘whore’ upon?”: Male and Female Use of the Word “Whore” in Shakespeare’s Canon 98Kay Stanton
6 “A word, sweet Lucrece”: Confession, Feminism, and The Rape of Lucrece 121Margo Hendricks
Part III Social Economies 137
7 Gender, Class, and the Ideology of Comic Form: Much Ado about Nothing and Twelfth Night 139Mihoko Suzuki
8 Gendered “Gifts” in Shakespeare’s Belmont: The Economies of Exchange in Early Modern England 162Jyotsna G. Singh
Part IV Race and Colonialism 179
9 The Great Indian Vanishing Trick – Colonialism, Property, and the Family in A Midsummer Night’s Dream 181Ania Loomba
10 Black Ram, White Ewe: Shakespeare, Race, and Women 206Joyce Green MacDonald
11 Sycorax in Algiers: Cultural Politics and Gynecology in Early Modern England 226Rachana Sachdev
12 Black and White, and Dread All Over: The Shakespeare Theatre’s “Photonegative” Othello and the Body of Desdemona 244Denise Albanese
Part V Performing Sexuality 267
13 Women and Boys Playing Shakespeare 269Juliet Dusinberre
14 Mutant Scenes and “Minor” Conflicts in Richard II 281Molly Smith
15 Lovesickness, Gender, and Subjectivity: Twelfth Night and As You Like It 294Carol Thomas Neely
16 … in the Lesbian Void: Woman–Woman Eroticism in Shakespeare’s Plays 318Theodora A. Jankowski
17 Duncan’s Corpse 339Susan Zimmerman
Part VI Religion 359
18 Others and Lovers in The Merchant of Venice 361M. Lindsay Kaplan
19 Between Idolatry and Astrology: Modes of Temporal Repetition in Romeo and Juliet 378Philippa Berry
Part VII Character, Genre, History 393
20 Putting on the Destined Livery: Isabella, Cressida, and our Virgin/Whore Obsession 395Anna Kamaralli
21 The Virginity Dialogue in All’s Well That Ends Well: Feminism, Editing, and Adaptation 411Rory Loughnane
22 Competitive Mourning and Female Agency in Richard III 428Mario DiGangi
23 Bearing Death in The Winter’s Tale 440Amy K. Burnette
24 Monarchs Who Cry: The Gendered Politics of Weeping in the English History Play 457Jean E. Howard
25 Shakespeare’s Women and the Crisis of Beauty 467Farah Karim-Cooper
Part VIII Appropriating Women, Appropriating Shakespeare 481
26 Women and Land: Henry VIII 483Lisa Hopkins
27 Desdemona: Toni Morrison’s Response to Othello 494Ayanna Thompson
28 Woman-Crafted Shakespeares: Appropriation, Intermediality, and Womanist Aesthetics 507Sujata Iyengar
29 A Thousand Voices: Performing Ariel 520Amanda Eubanks Winkler
Index 539
What People are Saying About This
"With the second edition of A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, we have the opportunity to revisit some of the most important interventions in a political and intellectual project that has remade Shakespeare studies. Ten freshly commissioned essays take the project forward with news of historical and textual discoveries and attention to Shakespeare in public culture. Once again our guide is Dympna Callaghan. Among the most clear-sighted and sure-footed of feminist scholars, Callaghan astutely engages with two decades of Shakespeare work and four hundred years of women’s experience." Lena Cowen Orlin, Georgetown University