The Tested Woman Plot

The Tested Woman Plot PDF Author: Lois E. Bueler
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 9780814208724
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
"In this study, Lois E. Bueler examines in broad literary historical terms what she calls the Tested Woman Plot, a "story-machine" that originated in the ancient Mediterranean world (as in the stories of Eve and Lucretia), flourished in English Renaissance drama (as in Much Ado about Nothing and The Changeling), and continued into the novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (as in Clarissa, Adam Bede, and The Scarlet Letter)." "Encyclopedic in scope, The Tested Woman Plot is a provocative look at a key narrative tradition that spans many genres and should appeal to all serious students of literature."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Tested Woman Plot

The Tested Woman Plot PDF Author: Lois E. Bueler
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 9780814208724
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
"In this study, Lois E. Bueler examines in broad literary historical terms what she calls the Tested Woman Plot, a "story-machine" that originated in the ancient Mediterranean world (as in the stories of Eve and Lucretia), flourished in English Renaissance drama (as in Much Ado about Nothing and The Changeling), and continued into the novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (as in Clarissa, Adam Bede, and The Scarlet Letter)." "Encyclopedic in scope, The Tested Woman Plot is a provocative look at a key narrative tradition that spans many genres and should appeal to all serious students of literature."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Clarissa's Plots

Clarissa's Plots PDF Author: Lois E. Bueler
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874134964
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This study also examines the connections among the plots: how Clarissa's self-scrutinizing response to the pressures of test and trial, and her refusal to achieve respectability at the expense of her integrity, is explained by her pursuit of Christian prudence; and how Lovelace's inability to fathom the disappearance of his tempter function after the rape, as well as his inability to respond as does Belford to Clarissa's exemplary influence, is an expression of his nature as protagonist in the Don Juan plot. Richardson conducts all three plots concurrently, Bueler demonstrates, by exploiting the psychologically and dramatistically rich resources of simultaneous dialogue and soliloquy inherent in the epistolary genre.

The Eighteenth Century English Novel

The Eighteenth Century English Novel PDF Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438114931
Category : Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
Early novelists such as Samuel Richardson, Daniel Defoe, and Laurence Sterne helped create the formula for the modern novel.

Heroic Disobedience: The Forced Marriage Plot and the British Novel, 1747-1880

Heroic Disobedience: The Forced Marriage Plot and the British Novel, 1747-1880 PDF Author: Leah Grisham
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648897819
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
'Heroic Disobedience: The Forced Marriage Plot and the British Novel, 1747-1880' shows the ways in which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels used what the author terms the forced marriage plot - a plot arc in which a greedy father tries to force his daughter into a marriage she does not want but that would be financially expedient to himself - to explore capitalism’s detrimental impacts on women’s right to autonomy. As capitalist economic practices replaced mercantilism, a woman’s value was seen primarily in the economic sense. That is, men came to recognize that women – especially young, marriageable women – could be used as objects of exchange between men. Recognizing this phenomenon, the novelists considered in 'Heroic Disobedience' – Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Lennox, Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Stone, and Anthony Trollope – depict the very specific ways in which women were raised to become willing pawns in this system. Religious discourse, conduct guides, marriage and property laws, wages, lack of meaningful education, and inheritance practices combined to leave women with no other options besides dependence on their patriarchs. Importantly, authors who use the forced marriage plot go beyond exposing women’s subjugation by creating – and celebrating – heroically disobedient heroines who believe, above all else, that they have the right to determine their own futures: futures in which they are autonomous agents, not subjected objects.

The Natural Laws of Plot

The Natural Laws of Plot PDF Author: Yoon Sun Lee
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512823414
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Is plot a line, an arc, or a shape? None of these. Rather than thinking of plot as a sequence of events or actions put into place solely through human agency against the backdrop of setting, this book questions why we should distinguish between plot and setting—and indeed, whether we can make such a distinction. After all, plot, Yoon Sun Lee contends, cannot be disentangled from the material setting in which it takes place. In The Natural Laws of Plot, Lee connects the history of the novel and the history of science to show how plot in the realist novel is given shape by the characteristics of the physical world—and how in turn, plot serves as the avenue through which the realist novel participates in the same lines of inquiry about the world as pursued by the natural and physical sciences. Lee argues that the novel emerges and evolves in tandem with the development of scientific practices and concepts in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe to investigate the idea of a unified and objective world. Drawing on readings from Defoe, Austen, Scott, and many others, Lee demonstrates how bodies, human and non-human, behave according to laws that are built into worlds by plot, and how they are subject to causes and consequences that can occur independently of individual action, social forces, or metaphysical destiny. This interest in representing and exploring how things happen sets the novel apart from other literary genres, and makes the history of science integral to the understanding of the history and theory of the novel, and of narrative. Plot, Lee shows us, is immersive and powerful, because it satisfies our wish to know how things happen in a coherent, objective, and possibly real world.

Ritual Violence and the Maternal in the British Novel, 1740-1820

Ritual Violence and the Maternal in the British Novel, 1740-1820 PDF Author: Raymond F. Hilliard
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 0838757502
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
This challenging book brings to light a mythic dimension of seventeen important eighteenth and early nineteenth-century narratives that revolve around the persecution of one or more important female characters, and offers original reading of novels by Richardson, Fielding, Burney, Radcliffe, Godwin, Austen, Scott, and others. The myth in question, which Raymond Hilliard calls "the myth of persecution and reparation," serves as a major vehicle for the early novel's preoccupation with the "mother," a mythic figure distinct from the historical mother or from the mother as she is represented in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century maternal ideology. Hilliard argues that the myth of persecution and reparation derives from the ropos of female sacrifice in the romance tradition, and shows that this topos is central to several kinds of novels-realist, Gothic, Jacobin, feminist, and historical. Hilliard contends that the narrative of persecution and reparation anticipates the twentieth-century maternal myth associated with the work of Melanie Klein and other "relational model" psychoanalytic theorists, and he thus also examines the psychosexual significance of the "mother." Hilliard explores the relation of psychosexual themes to social representations, and delineates a new theory of plot-both tragic and comic plots- in the early novel. --Book Jacket.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek PDF Author: Kim Michele Richardson
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1492671533
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
RECOMMENDED BY DOLLY PARTON IN PEOPLE MAGAZINE! A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A USA TODAY BESTSELLER A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER The bestselling historical fiction novel from Kim Michele Richardson, this is a novel following Cussy Mary, a packhorse librarian and her quest to bring books to the Appalachian community she loves, perfect for readers of William Kent Kreuger and Lisa Wingate. The perfect addition to your next book club! The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything—everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she's going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachias and suspicion as deep as the holler. Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman's belief that books can carry us anywhere—even back home. Look for The Book Woman's Daughter, the new novel from Kim Michele Richardson, out now! Other Bestselling Historical Fiction from Sourcebooks Landmark: The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris

The Chastity Plot

The Chastity Plot PDF Author: Lisabeth During
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022674163X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
In The Chastity Plot, Lisabeth During tells the story of the rise, fall, and transformation of the ideal of chastity. From its role in the practice of asceticism to its associations with sovereignty, violence, and the purity of nature, it has been loved, honored, and despised. Obsession with chastity has played a powerful and disturbing role in our moral imagination. It has enforced patriarchy’s double standards, complicated sexual relations, and imbedded in Western culture a myth of gender that has been long contested by feminists. Still not yet fully understood, the chastity plot remains with us, and the metaphysics of purity continue to haunt literature, religion, and philosophy. Idealized and unattainable, sexual renunciation has shaped social institutions, political power, ethical norms, and clerical abuses. It has led to destruction and passion, to seductive fantasies that inspired saints and provoked libertines. As During shows, it should not be underestimated. Examining literature, religion, psychoanalysis, and cultural history from antiquity through the middle ages and into modernity, During provides a sweeping history of chastity and insight into its subversive potential. Instead of simply asking what chastity is, During considers what chastity can do, why we should care, and how it might provide a productive disruption, generating new ways of thinking about sex, integrity, and freedom.

Virtuous Necessity

Virtuous Necessity PDF Author: Jessica Murphy
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047212109X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
While many scholars find the early modern triad of virtues for women—silence, chastity, and obedience—to be straightforward and nonnegotiable, Jessica C. Murphy demonstrates that these virtues were by no means as direct and inflexible as they might seem. Drawing on the literature of the period—from the plays of Shakespeare to a conduct manual written for a princess to letters from a wife to her husband—as well as contemporary gender theory and philosophy, she uncovers the multiple meanings of behavioral expectations for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women. Through her renegotiation of cultural ideals as presented in both literary and nonliterary texts of early modern England, Murphy presents models for “acceptable” women’s conduct that lie outside of the rigid prescriptions of the time. Virtuous Necessity will appeal to readers interested in early modern English literature, including canonical authors such as Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, as well as their female contemporaries such as Amelia Lanyer and Elizabeth Cary. It will also appeal to scholars of conduct literature; of early modern drama, popular literature, poetry, and prose; of women’s history; and of gender theory.

The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman's Film

The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman's Film PDF Author: Heather Laing
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351544055
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Heather Laing examines, for the first time, the issues of gender and emotion that underpin the classical style of film scoring, but that have until now remained unquestioned and untheorized, thus providing a benchmark for thinking on more recent and alternative styles of scoring. Many theorists have discussed this type of music in film as a signifier of emotion and 'the feminine', a capacity in which it is frequently associated with female characters. The full effect of such an association on either female or male characterization, however, has not been examined. This book considers the effects of this association by progress through three stages: cultural-historical precedents, the generic parameters of melodrama and the woman's film, and the narrativization of music in film through diegetic performance and the presence of musicians as characters. Case studies of specific films provide textual and musical analyses, and the genres of melodrama and the woman's film have been chosen as representative not only of the epitome of the Hollywood scoring style, but also of the narrative association of women, emotion and music. Laing leads to the conclusion that music functions as more than merely a signifier of emotion. Rather, it takes a crucial role in both indicating and determining how emotion is actually understood as part of the construction of gender and its representation in film.