Shakespeare and Women (Oxford Shakespeare Topics) - Softcover

Rackin, Phyllis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198186940 ISBN 13: 9780198186946

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Shakespeare and Women situates Shakespeare's female characters in multiple historical contexts, ranging from the early modern England in which they originated to the contemporary Western world in which our own encounters with them are staged. In so doing, this book seeks to challenge currently prevalent views of Shakespeare's women-both the women he depicted in his plays and the women he encountered in the world he inhabited.

Chapter 1, "A Usable History," analyses the implications and consequences of the emphasis on patriarchal power, male misogyny, and women's oppression that has dominated recent feminist Shakespeare scholarship, while subsequent chapters propose alternative models for feminist analysis. Chapter 2, "The Place(s) of Women in Shakespeare's World," emphasizes the frequently overlooked kinds of social, political, and economic agency exercised by the women Shakespeare would have known in both Stratford and London. Chapter 3, "Our Canon, Ourselves," addresses the implications of the modern popularity of plays such as The Taming of the Shrew which seem to endorse women's subjugation, arguing that the plays-and the aspects of those plays-that we have chosen to emphasize tell us more about our own assumptions than about the beliefs that informed the responses of Shakespeare's first audiences. Chapter 4, "Boys will be Girls," explores the consequences for women of the use of male actors to play women's roles. Chapter 5, "The Lady's Reeking Breath," turns to the sonnets, the texts that seem most resistant to feminist appropriation, to argue that Shakespeare's rewriting of the idealized Petrarchan lady anticipates modern feminist critiques of the essential misogyny of the Petrarchan tradition.

About this title

Review:

[this book] is not just a rich and original resource for scholars interested in fin-de-siècle Shakespeare or women performers of that period but also an encouragement to others working on Shakespearean performances in different historical times. (Susan Bennett, Modern Drama)

Phyllis Rackin has provide us with a deftly defined casebook for the reconsideration of feminist criticism in the twenty-first century that looks to the future through a clear articulation of that criticism's past ... In each chapter, Rackin provides an alternative to the limiting assumptions she describes and thus offers brave new ways of seeing ... In focusing on the question of Shakespeare and women in the twenty-first century, Phyllis Rackin has renewed a sense of the feminist agenda within the field of Shakespeare studies. (Rebecca Laroche, Shakespeare Quarterly)

Believing that historical research can provide rich resources to revitalize feminist criticism (if one looks for them), Rackin ably and amply points the way. She examines the place(s) of women in Shakespeare's world; the tendency to shape the canon in the reader's own image; the powerful truths Shakespeare offers about women (notably in Cleopatra) and life, truths evident despite or sometimes because of the use of boy actors; Shakespeare's 'complicated negotiation with the Petrachan tradition' in the sonnets, which succeed, while addressing both sexes, in enabling women to think and feel honestly about themselves; and the continuous contemporaneousness of Shakespeare's women. The 'Further Reading' section is a vein of rich ore. Essential. (Choice)

About the Author:

Professor Phyllis Rackin has taught Shakespeare at the University of Pennsylvania for forty years. A former President of the Shakespeare Association of America, she has published three books on Shakespeare as well as numerous scholarly articles on Shakespeare and related subjects in anthologies and in such journals as PMLA, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Shakespeare-Jahrbuch. Her awards include an ACLS fellowship and a Lindback award for distinguished teaching.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0198186940
• ISBN 13: 9780198186946
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180