Clarissa's Ciphers: Meaning and Disruption in Richardson's Clarissa

by Terry Castle

Overview

As Samuel Richardson's 'exemplar to her sex,’ Clarissa in the eponymous novel published in 1748 is the paradigmatic female victim. In Clarissa’s Ciphers, Terry Castle delineates the ways in which, in a world where only voice carries authority, Clarissa is repeatedly silenced, both metaphorically and literally. A victim of rape, she is first a victim of hermeneutic abuse. Drawing on feminist criticism and hermeneutic theory, Castle examines the question of authority in the novel. By tracing the patterns of abuse and exploitation that occur when meanings are arbitrarily and violently imposed, she explores the sexual politics of reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801414954
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	07/31/1982
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Terry Castle is Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. She is the author of many books, including The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture, Boss Ladies, Watch Out! Essays on Women, Sex, and Writing, and The Professor: A Sentimental Education.

Table of Contents

1. Clarissa by Halves

2. Discovering Reading

3. Reading the Letter, Reading the World

4. Interrupting "Miss Clary"

5. Denatured Signs

6. The Voyage Out

7. The Death of the Author: Clarissa's Coffin

8. The Death of the Author: Richardson and the Reader

9. Epilogue: The Reader Lives

Editorial Reviews

"Castle's work on sexuality and gender has helped make feminist and queer intellectual projects acceptable."—Signs

"The truth is outrageous: that's a principle Terry Castle has proved. She is as sound as she is scandalous. Any educated person can read her essays with profit and pleasure—and with a jaw that is permanently dropped."—Edmund White on Castle’s Boss Ladies, Watch Out!

"Brave, learned, sassy, wildly funny, Terry Castle knows heaps about people (and lives) as well as about literature in English. Her writing is full of feeling and wisdom. She's not only our best Female Literary Critic and One Wise Babe. She's the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today."—Susan Sontag

From the Publisher