The Rival Widows, or Fair Libertine (1735)

The Rival Widows, or Fair Libertine (1735) PDF Author: Tiffany Potter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351882589
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Elizabeth Cooper's The Rival Widows, or Fair Libertine provides a unique opportunity to restore to scholarly and pedagogical attention a neglected female writer and a play with broad and significant implications for studies of eighteenth-century history, culture and gender. Following the adventures of Lady Bellair, a "glowing, joyous young Widow," the storyline regenders standard expectations about desire, marriage, libertinism and sentiment. The play has not been reprinted since 1735; therefore this old-spelling edition gives scholars access to an important but neglected resource for studies of women writers and eighteenth-century theatre. In an original and extensive introduction, Tiffany Potter presents cultural and historical information that highlights the scholarly implications of this newly available play. She offers a brief biographical sketch of the playwright; a summary of sources for specific elements of the play; an overview of the theatrical climate of the time (with particular focus on the conditions leading to the Licensing Act of 1737); a discussion of the place of women in eighteenth-century society; a summary of symbiotic cultural discourses of libertinism and sensibility in the early eighteenth century; and a discussion of the general cultural significance of Cooper's demonstration of the malleability of prescriptive gender roles. Further value is added to this edition through its appendices, which reproduce documents relating to the playwright Elizabeth Cooper and to the Licensing Act of 1737 (including the text of the Act itself).

The Rival Widows, or Fair Libertine (1735)

The Rival Widows, or Fair Libertine (1735) PDF Author: Tiffany Potter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351882589
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book Here

Book Description
Elizabeth Cooper's The Rival Widows, or Fair Libertine provides a unique opportunity to restore to scholarly and pedagogical attention a neglected female writer and a play with broad and significant implications for studies of eighteenth-century history, culture and gender. Following the adventures of Lady Bellair, a "glowing, joyous young Widow," the storyline regenders standard expectations about desire, marriage, libertinism and sentiment. The play has not been reprinted since 1735; therefore this old-spelling edition gives scholars access to an important but neglected resource for studies of women writers and eighteenth-century theatre. In an original and extensive introduction, Tiffany Potter presents cultural and historical information that highlights the scholarly implications of this newly available play. She offers a brief biographical sketch of the playwright; a summary of sources for specific elements of the play; an overview of the theatrical climate of the time (with particular focus on the conditions leading to the Licensing Act of 1737); a discussion of the place of women in eighteenth-century society; a summary of symbiotic cultural discourses of libertinism and sensibility in the early eighteenth century; and a discussion of the general cultural significance of Cooper's demonstration of the malleability of prescriptive gender roles. Further value is added to this edition through its appendices, which reproduce documents relating to the playwright Elizabeth Cooper and to the Licensing Act of 1737 (including the text of the Act itself).

Cutting Edges

Cutting Edges PDF Author: James E. Gill
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870498923
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
The essays in Cutting Edges examine English satire of the eighteenth century from various theory-based postmodern perspectives. Some examine little-known works that postmodern concerns, such as the role of women and the problems of authorship, have rendered especially interesting; others reconsider familiar works in terms of the latest critical issues. The justification for these investigations is that both satire and postmodern methods are extremely skeptical and acutely aware that language is always ironic - always pointing to the gap between signifier and signified. The approaches in this book include those associated with deconstruction, reception theory, Marxist criticism, the new historicism, and various feminist criticisms, and with such theorists as Derrida, Bakhtin, Goux, and Luhmann. While most of the major figures of eighteenth-century satire - Butler, Rochester, Swift, Pope, Gay, Fielding, Sterne, and Johnson - are represented here, so too are many other interesting writers - Thomas Shadwell, Fannie Burney, Mary Davys, and Elizabeth Hamilton, to name but a few.

Cross-Cultural Issues in Art

Cross-Cultural Issues in Art PDF Author: Steven Leuthold
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113685455X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This book provides an engaging introduction to aesthetic concepts, expanding the discussion beyond the usual Western theorists and Western examples.

Dramatic Story Structure

Dramatic Story Structure PDF Author: Edward J. Fink
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135081212
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
A successful screenplay starts with an understanding of the fundamentals of dramatic story structure. In this practical introduction, Edward J. Fink condenses centuries of writing about dramatic theory into ten concise and readable chapters, providing the tools for building an engaging narrative and turning it into an agent-ready script. Fink devotes chapters to expanding on the six basic elements of drama from Aristotle’s Poetics (plot, character, theme, dialogue, sound, and spectacle), the theory and structure of comedy, as well as the concepts of unity, metaphor, style, universality, and catharsis. Key terms and discussion questions encourage readers to think through the components of compelling stories and put them into practice, and script formatting guidelines ensure your finished product looks polished and professional. Dramatic Story Structure is an essential resource not only for aspiring screenwriters, but also for experienced practitioners in need of a refresher on the building blocks of storytelling.

The Language of the Heart, 1600-1750

The Language of the Heart, 1600-1750 PDF Author: Robert A. Erickson
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812233940
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Erickson (English, U. of California-Santa Barbara) examines both scientific and romantic portrayals of the human heart in early modern English literature. After reviewing the Biblical heart, he considers William Harvey's model of a phallic pump in a feminized body, Milton's Paradise Lost, Richardson's Clarissa, Aphra Behn's Oroonoke as a women's perspective, and other works. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Country and the City

The Country and the City PDF Author: Raymond Williams
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195198102
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
As a brilliant survey of English literature in terms of changing attitudes towards country and city, Williams' highly-acclaimed study reveals the shifting images and associations between these two traditional poles of life throughout the major developmental periods of English culture.

Mothering Daughters

Mothering Daughters PDF Author: Susan C. Greenfield
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814332016
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The rise of the novel and of the ideal nuclear family was no mere coincidence, argues Susan C. Greenfield in this fascinating look at the construction of modern maternity. The rise of the novel and of the ideal nuclear family was no mere coincidence, argues Susan C. Greenfield in this fascinating look at the construction of modern maternity. Many historians maintain that the eighteenth century witnessed the idealization of the caring, loving mother. Here Greenfield charts how the newly emerging novels of the period, in their increasing feminization, responded to and helped shape that image, often infusing it with more nuance and flexibility. By the end of the eighteenth century, she notes, novels by women about missing mothers and their suffering daughters abounded. Even as the political implications of the novels vary, the books uniformly insist on the tenacity of the mother-daughter bond despite the mother's absence. Exploring the historically contingent assumptions about maternal care that informed writers during this period, Greenfield argues that women's novels helped construct the story of mother love and loss that psychoanalysis would soon inherit.

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 Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London

The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London PDF Author: Lawrence Manley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107495555
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
London has provided the setting and inspiration for a host of literary works in English, from canonical masterpieces to the popular and ephemeral. Drawing upon a variety of methods and materials, the essays in this volume explore the London of Langland and the Peasants' Rebellion, of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan stage, of Pepys and the Restoration coffee house, of Dickens and Victorian wealth and poverty, of Conrad and the Empire, of Woolf and the wartime Blitz, of Naipaul and postcolonial immigration, and of contemporary globalism. Contributions from historians, art historians, theorists and media specialists as well as leading literary scholars exemplify current approaches to genre, gender studies, book history, performance studies and urban studies. In showing how the tradition of English literature is shaped by representations of London, this volume also illuminates the relationship between the literary imagination and the society of one of the world's greatest cities.

The Matrimonial Trap

The Matrimonial Trap PDF Author: Laura E. Thomason
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 1611485274
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Mary Delany’s phrase “the matrimonial trap” illuminates the apprehension with which genteel women of the eighteenth century viewed marriage. These women were generally required to marry in order to secure their futures, yet hindered from freely choosing a husband. They faced marriage anxiously because they lacked the power either to avoid it or to define it for themselves. For some women, the written word became a means by which to exercise the power that they otherwise lacked. Through their writing, they made the inevitable acceptable while registering their dissatisfaction with their circumstances. Rhetoric, exercised both in public and in private, allowed these women to define their identities as individuals and as wives, to lay out and test the boundaries of more egalitarian spousal relationships, and to criticize the traditional marriage system as their culture had defined it.