Vishnuvajjala Feminist Medievalisms

Embodiment and Vulnerability in Literature and Film
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80270-153-1
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 134 Seiten

This book examines feminist textual and cinematic engagements with the idea of the Middle Ages in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, arguing that the idea of the medieval past is central to the work of novelists and directors interested in embodiment and vulnerability. Careful and illuminating analysis of particular moments in fiction, film, and political discourse dismantles the false binary between popular and intellectual medievalisms, which rests on gendered understandings of genre and audience, while demonstrating that masculinist or patriarchal medievalisms have an equal but understudied counterpart. The book's first three chapters cover Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and its afterlives, the final works of Virginia Woolf, and late twentieth-century film and music videos from the United States. The final chapter examines the treatment of women's bodies and vulnerability in both political theory and recent electoral politics, arguing that they share a common thread of misogyny rooted in the idea of the medieval past, and that one way to challenge that misogyny is by looking at complex feminist engagements with that same past, both real and imagined.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vishnuvajjala, Usha

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Feminismus, Feministische Theorie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Mittelalterliche, neuzeitliche Archäologie (Europa)
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Europäische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Gattungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction Chapter One: Nested Medievalisms and Affected Bodies in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey Chapter Two: Feminism and Medievalism in Woolf’s Final Works Chapter Three: Medievalism as Feminist Sanctuary in the late Twentieth Century Chapter Four: Chaucer, Vulnerable Bodies, Somatophobia, and Theory Select Bibliography/Further Reading Index

Über Autor(innen)

Vishnuvajjala Usha :

Usha Vishnuvajjala is an Assistant Professor of English at SUNY–New Paltz. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and edited collections and she recently co-edited the volume Women’s Friendship in Medieval Literature (2022) with Karma Lochrie