Ventriloquized voices : feminist theory and English Renaissance texts

Resource Information

The work Ventriloquized voices : feminist theory and English Renaissance texts represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Ventriloquized voices : feminist theory and English Renaissance texts

Title remainder

feminist theory and English Renaissance texts

Statement of responsibility

Elizabeth D. Harvey

Creator

• Harvey, Elizabeth D

Subject

• Authorship -- Sex differences | History -- 16th century
• Authorship -- Sex differences | History -- 17th century
• English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism | Theory, etc
• English literature -- Male authors | History and criticism | Theory, etc
• Feminism and literature -- England -- History -- 16th century
• Authorship -- Sex differences
• Point of view (Literature)
• Sex role in literature
• Women -- England -- History -- Renaissance, 1450-1600 -- Historiography
• Women and literature -- England -- History -- 16th century
• Women and literature -- England -- History -- 17th century
• Feminism and literature -- England -- History -- 17th century

Language

eng

Summary

Ventriloquized Voices is a fascinating examination of the appropriation of the feminine voice by male authors. In a historical and theoretical study of English texts of the early modern period, Elizabeth D. Harvey looks at the transvestism at work in texts which purport to be by women but which are in fact written by men. The crossing of gender in these ventriloquized works illuminates the discourses of patronage, medicine, madness and eroticism in English Renaissance society, revealing as it does the construction of sexuality, gender identity, and power. The author brilliantly juxtaposes such canonical works as John Donne's Anniversaries and Spenser's Faerie Queene with pamphlets on transvestism, midwifery books, and treatises on gynecology and hysteria. By interrogating the fashioning of gender within a broad range of Renaissance culture, Ventriloquized Voices investigates not only the relationship between men, women and language, but also crucial twentieth-century feminist debates such as essentialism and the female voice. This is a powerful and original work. It will be of vital interest to scholars and students of the Renaissance, as well as a wide range of feminist readers

Cataloging source

DLC

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography