Aphra Behn's English Feminism

Aphra Behn's English Feminism PDF Author: Dolors Altaba-Artal
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
ISBN: 9781575910291
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Behn's novels, though, discard Zayas's pessimistic views and supernatural accounts; using wit and satire, they completely subvert the original texts."--BOOK JACKET.

Aphra Behn's English Feminism

Aphra Behn's English Feminism PDF Author: Dolors Altaba-Artal
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
ISBN: 9781575910291
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Behn's novels, though, discard Zayas's pessimistic views and supernatural accounts; using wit and satire, they completely subvert the original texts."--BOOK JACKET.

From Aphra Behn to Fun Home

From Aphra Behn to Fun Home PDF Author: Carey Purcell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538115263
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Theatre has long been considered a feminine interest for which women consistently purchase the majority of tickets, while the shows they are seeing typically are written and brought to the stage by men. Furthermore, the stories these productions tell are often about men, and the complex leading roles in these shows are written for and performed by male actors. Despite this imbalance, the feminist voice presses to be heard and has done so with more success than ever before. In From Aphra Behn to Fun Home: A Cultural History of Feminist Theatre, Carey Purcell traces the evolution of these important artists and productions over several centuries. After examining the roots of feminist theatre in early Greek plays and looking at occasional works produced before the twentieth century, Purcell then identifies the key players and productions that have emerged over the last several decades. This book covers the heyday of the second wave feminist movement—which saw the growth of female-centric theatre groups—and highlights the work of playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Pam Gems, and Wendy Wasserstein. Other prominent artists discussed here include playwrights Paula Vogel Lynn and Tony-award winning directors Garry Hynes and Julie Taymor. The volume also examines diversity in contemporary feminist theatre—with discussions of such playwrights as Young Jean Lee and Lynn Nottage—and a look toward the future. Purcell explores the very nature of feminist theater—does it qualify if a play is written by a woman or does it just need to feature strong female characters?—as well as how notable activist work for feminism has played a pivotal role in theatre. An engaging survey of female artists on stage and behind the scenes, From Aphra Behn to Fun Home will be of interest to theatregoers and anyone interested in the invaluable contributions of women in the performing arts.

Rereading Aphra Behn

Rereading Aphra Behn PDF Author: Heidi Hutner
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813914435
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Aphra Behn was the first Englishwoman to earn her living from writing. This collection of critical essays explores the different genres in Behn's canon, including her plays, criticism, fiction and poetry, from a wide variety of feminist theoretical approaches.

The Secret Life of Aphra Behn

The Secret Life of Aphra Behn PDF Author: Janet Todd
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1448212545
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 830

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Book Description
'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn; for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds,' said Virginia Woolf. Yet that tomb, in Westminster Abbey, records one of the few uncontested facts about this Restoration playwright, poet, novelist and spy: the date of her death, 16 April 1689. For the rest secrecy and duplicity are almost the key to her life. She loved codes, making and breaking them; writing her life becomes a decoding of a passionate but playful woman. Janet Todd draws on documents she has rediscovered in the Dutch archives, and on Behn's own writings, to tell a story of court, diplomatic and sexual intrigue, and of the rise from humble origins of the first woman to earn her living as a professional writer. Aphra Behn's first notable employment was as a Royal spy in Holland; she had probably also spied in Surinam. It was not until she was in her thirties that she published the first of the 19 plays and other works which established her fame (though not riches) among her 'good, sweet, honey-candied readers'. Many of her works were openly erotic, indeed as frank as anything by her friends Wycherley and Rochester. Some also offered an inside view of court and political intrigues, and Todd reveals the historical scandals and legal cases behind some of Behn's most famous 'fictions'.

The Rover

The Rover PDF Author: Aphra Behn
Publisher: Joe Books Ltd
ISBN: 1987955684
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
The magic of Naples during Carnival inspires love between a disparate group of local citizens and visiting Englishmen.

Broken Boundaries

Broken Boundaries PDF Author: Katherine M. Quinsey
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813159997
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
This volume of twelve original essays is the first comprehensive study of feminist issues in Restoration drama. The late seventeenth century marks a pivotal era in the history of feminism, when Renaissance assumptions about gender and patriarchy were being directly challenged. For the first time, women appeared onstage as actresses, made their presence felt as spectators and patrons, and wrote a number of the plays produced in theaters. In an unusually direct and probing way, drama of the Restoration period raised radical questions about the place of women in the family and in society, and about the essential nature of men and women. The essays examine feminist issues from a variety of historical and theoretical approaches across a spectrum of plays—comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, and heroic drama. By addressing the acute questions of gender raised in the drama, Broken Boundaries presents a vivid portrait of the uncertainties and changing perceptions in all areas of intellectual, political, and social life during the last decades of the seventeenth century.

The Rise of the Woman Novelist

The Rise of the Woman Novelist PDF Author: Jane Spencer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description


A History of Feminist Literary Criticism

A History of Feminist Literary Criticism PDF Author: Gill Plain
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139465821
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Feminism has transformed the academic study of literature, fundamentally altering the canon of what is taught and setting new agendas for literary analysis. In this authoritative history of feminist literary criticism, leading scholars chart the development of the practice from the Middle Ages to the present. The first section of the book explores protofeminist thought from the Middle Ages onwards, and analyses the work of pioneers such as Wollstonecraft and Woolf. The second section examines the rise of second-wave feminism and maps its interventions across the twentieth century. A final section examines the impact of postmodernism on feminist thought and practice. This book offers a comprehensive guide to the history and development of feminist literary criticism and a lively reassessment of the main issues and authors in the field. It is essential reading for all students and scholars of feminist writing and literary criticism.

The Critical Fortunes of Aphra Behn

The Critical Fortunes of Aphra Behn PDF Author: Janet Todd
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571131652
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
This is the first study of the posthumous life of Aphra Behn, the extraordinary vicissitudes of her critical reception, and the personal vilifications of her reputation through three centuries. Beginning with the reception of Behn's work during her lifetime, which she herself helped to orchestrate by performing herself as a seductive woman, a beleaguered lady writer, and a serious intellectual, among other roles, the work ends with the late 20th-century reception of Behn, when the interest in gender, race, and class has made of her almost a postmodern writer. In the 17th century she was seen as a playwright of sexy and propagandist comedies, and attacked by those who disapproved her supposedly unfeminine stance and her royalist politics. Later, as the Restoration period itself fell into disrepute, Behn's plays were denigrated along with those of her fellow men, but greater opprobrium fell on her as a woman, because in the 19th century it was felt that a female writer should have higher morals than a man. During this period, Behn's reputation was exceedingly low, while her short story Oroonoko gained acclaim, freed from any association with its author or her supposedly squalid times. In the 18th and 19th centuries Oroonoko moved from being viewed as political commentary and heroic romance to a sentimental tale of doomed love and then an abolitionist text. In the early twentieth century it was hailed as one of the earliest realist texts, part of the great English ascent into the novel. JANET TODD is professor of English at the University of East Anglia

Unmaking Mimesis

Unmaking Mimesis PDF Author: Elin Diamond
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134982135
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In Unmaking Mimesis Elin Diamond interrogates the concept of mimesis in relation to feminism, theatre and performance. She combines psychoanalytic, semiotic and materialist strategies with readings of selected plays by writers as diverse as Ibsen, Brecht, Aphra Behn, Caryl Churchill and Peggy Shaw. Through a series of provocative readings of theatre, theory and feminist performance she demonstrates the continuing force of feminism and mimesis in critical thinking today. Unmaking Mimesis will interest theatre scholars and performance and cultural theorists, for all of whom issues of text, representation and embodiment are of compelling concern.