Staging Slander and Gender in Early Modern England

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-138-71560-8
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch

Reihe: Routledge Revivals

This title was first published in 2003. This book examines slander in early modern England as a gendered and theatrical cultural practice.The author explores oral defamation - the negative fashioning of others - in language and rhetoric, social interaction and the law, literature and authorship as well as religion, subjectivity and the body. Since the 'slander triangle', which requires an accuser, an audience and a victim, is inherently theatrical, the dramatic representation of slander forms a central concern of the study. Focusing on sexual slander in particular, the author shows how femininity was fashioned between praise and slander, and how the 'slandered heroine' emerged as an influential fantasy of femininity - a linguistic, legal and social mechanism that lends itself to masculine self-fashioning through the display of eloquence but that is also subject to resignification by female authors.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Habermann, Ina

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents: Introduction: Tongues of fire; How to do things with words (Romeo and Juliet, treatises on rhetoric); The rhetoric of slander (Othello, The Orator); The law of slander (treatises on the law);The brokers of oral reputation (treatises on the law, The Devil's Law Case, A Cure for a Cuckold, The Merry Wives of Windsor); Femininity between praise and slander (Il Pastor Fido, The Devil Is an Ass, Love's Victory); The Poisoned Tongue (treatises on slander, Lingua); The tongues of Pentecost (treatises on the tongue, Mary Sidney's Psalm translation); The slandered heroine (Othello, The Tragedy of Mariam); Bibliography; Index.